"Dutch Boyd" - Con Artist?

For those of you who watch The World Series of Poker on ESPN tuesday nights, "Dutch" Boyd is probably a familiar name to you. He is the one who does all of the chip tricks.

Well, he may have a few other tricks up his sleeve...:

"Russ 'Dutch' Boyd to Open a New Online Card Room

The former owner of the now defunct PokerSpot.com has announced plans to open another online card room, a move that is getting strange looks from much of the poker playing community.

This story begins on August 17, 2000, when a post from 'WJR' appeared on the poker newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker (RGP), stating that he was having trouble receiving his cashout from PokerSpot.com, a new online poker room. Shortly after, the post was replied to by Russ "Dutch" Boyd, CEO of PokerSpot. Boyd wrote, '...we did not receive your cashout request. I am not sure why, and we are still investigating, but we have no intention of keeping your money. This is a very isolated incident, and I think you'll find very few complaints regarding our customer service.'

Ahh, but as time would tell, this was not an 'isolated incident' and there were not 'very few complaints', there were many.

The posts on RGP started to build up. One after another complaining (and warning others) that their cashouts were not getting processed. And just as quickly as the complaints rolled out, so did the excuses from PokerSpot support, excuses like, 'We are reworking our entire cash out system, and this has delayed all cash outs by a week or two.'

One PokerSpot member, John Buchanan, who played under the username 'MS Sunshine', claimed that Russ Boyd and PokerSpot owed him and his wife 'over $56,000'.

What was going on at PokerSpot? Did Russ Boyd and company run off with the money? The players wanted to know.

In February of 2001, Russ Boyd finally came forward with another address to RGP:

'As many of you are aware, we've been faced with some recent problems at Pokerspot...Due to a situation with Net Pro Ltd., the company that until recently processed our credit card deposits, a large amount of our funds, which includes player funds, has been stalled." Boyd went on to say, "As far as money owed to players, Pokerspot will make good on all pending cashouts."

But PokerSpot never did "make good" on all pending cashouts as Boyd promised. Some that did receive checks were out of luck when they reported that their checks failed to clear the bank.