Former Lock Poker Spokesman Speaks Out On Troubled Site

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Wednesday, February 25th, 2015 | Written by Charles Washington

Once considered a rising star of the online poker world, Lock Poker’s reputation has since been reduced to tatters following years of players being unable to withdraw funds from the site. In fact, once it was revealed Lock Poker owes its beleaguered customers somewhere between $1 million and $15 million, it didn’t take long for such notable pros as Chris “Moorman1” Moorman, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Matt Stout and Paul Volpe to end their sponsorship deals with a site many now consider nothing more than a “Ponzi scheme”.

This week, a revealing interview was then published by Pokerfuse concerning another person apparently owed money by Lock Poker, namely Shane Bridges, the site’s former Director of Social Media and Affiliate Marketing, and his dire warning to affected players is that they can kiss their frozen funds goodbye. As an extract of his interview explains:

“I never had access to any real financials, but with no significant movement on cashouts and promises of the big turnaround now being 12 months old it would be my assumption that player balances won’t be honored now.”

Why Didn’t He Speak Up Earlier?

By 2013, Lock Poker customers started experiencing difficulties withdrawing funds from the site, a situation which continued through all of 2014 and now 2015. According to Shane Bridges, once the site’s money difficulties became known, he held off speaking out on the issue in early 2013 because he thought the company still had “one last shot” to solve the problem if CEO Jen Larson had been able to secure the cash injection necessary to honor outstanding player balances. By June/July 2013, however, Bridges says his belief in the business had been “completely erased”. Addressing the topic of whether high volume players were initially promised a quicker cash out process than other players, Bridges subsequently replied:

“Regular players were always given preferential treatment in the cashout process whether it was good times or bad. It’s been so long since significant cashouts were actually processed I couldn’t actually say how far along it was that she was still making those promises.”

What Caused Lock Poker’s Failure?

Speculating as to the main reason behind Lock Poker’s spectacular decline, Shane Bridges blames the “instability” of the poker market, which includes “constant network changes”, as well as the well documented processing problems experienced within the online gambling industry as a whole. As Banks continues, the constant seizure of payment processors by the US Department of Justice, as well as the activities of unscrupulous processors in a shrinking poker market had the effect of placing too much strain on Lock’s bottom line. In addition, Lock Poker’s low marketing expenditure helped compound the site’s problems further.

Overspending By Management

In his interview, Shane Bridges also draws attention to the “lifestyle spends” and the “over the top” extravagance of management to explain some of the inefficiencies which contributed the site’s overall decline. The examples he cites includes first class airplane flights everywhere for CEO Jen Larson and Lock programmer Brendan Young, together with 5 star hotels, $500 bottles of wine with meals, Vintage Dom Pérignon whenever champagne was drunk, and “insane” over tipping.

Sponsored Pros Kept In The Dark

As well as Chris Moorman, Michael Mizrachi, Matt Stout and Paul Volpe, other Lock sponsored pros have included Melanie Weisner, Brett Jungblut, Annette Obrestad, Felipe Ramos, Eric Lynch, and Bryan Pellegrino. While some left under their own volition, other seem to have simply exited after the site removed its sponsored pro tab in January 2014, presumably as it took itself away from pro sponsorship affiliations. As to whether any of the pros were aware of the problems plaguing Lock, Bridges said that after the situation became apparent, none of the pros knowingly promoted Lock, and any that did had large balances themselves on the site and were hoping CEO Jen Larson could still salvage the situation. As he then elaborates:

“Everyone had a personal level of trust and as that eroded they pulled out and stopped promoting it. The real financial details were only ever known to Jen, the CTO and possibly the CS Manager who also handled the cashier.”

False Promises

In April 2014, the Poker Players Alliance contacted Lock Poker regarding the “substantial number of complaints” made by disgruntled customers still owed money. To date no satisfactory response has been received, yet the site still continues to offer a Welcome Bonus of 200% up to $1,000 as it attempt to snare more unwitting victims. In the meantime, PokerScout shows Lock Poker with a seven day average of just 18 cash game players, and a peak of 36 players.