I was planning on waiting to talk to Jasep this morning (or being blown off by him) before I posted in this thread, but with more and more coming to light I shouldn't hold back on anything I may know. If I'm 100% wrong and he sent the 22Q check and makes everyone whole than so be it, I'll apologize to him, but right now it doesn't look very good. and hopefully this paints a clearer picture of the whole story.
***Late Edit: It's actually really hard for me to hit "submit" on this, because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I simply don't want to beleive the 22Q stuff.***
Me and Jasep.... Jasep and I
First off, yes i was friendly with Jasep online (never met him irl) but the extent of our relationship was that I talked to him on skype a couple times a week about poker, the forum drama, and life in general. I've always considered Jasep a bit of a "hustler", willing to shoot some angles and such, but overall I had a good opinion of him and felt he was a pretty straight-shooter. We'd done several financial transactions ranging from payments to transfers, and i never once had an issue.
When he asked if he could post Projekt Sep on PFO I said ok, and I posted this under it (I can't remember if he asked me to post our financial dealings or not, but that doesn't really matter):
I may rollover my BAP money, I'll let you know on Monday... if you have anything left by then
Also, I've done multiple transaction with Jasep and never had an issue, if anyone is wondering
Hardly a vouch, but thankfully only a couple of shares were purchased there. You'll also notice I wasn't rushing to reinvest in Jasep, which I'll explain now:
Investing in Projekt Sep
I was quite sure he couldn’t pay me the $200 I was owed after the Foxwoods BAP but I didn’t think it was out of dishonesty, more just a gambler going through a rough patch and maybe making a few mistakes, since a few months earlier he could have gotten $100 out of me for a waterslide (it was a nice waterslide!) and put me off til the spring if he needed to because that's when I asked to have it. So I knew this guy was close to broke, and I even asked him what his life roll and monthly nut was (these two numbers were close to even), but I truly felt he was trying to get his life back in order.
During this time I had some idea that Projekt Sep was more of a loan than a true stake and he had used some of the money to pay off past debts or bills, and was now playing on a makeshift roll of like $500 or $1,000, or worse using house credit at underground rooms.
I didn’t want to raise these concerns as I was hoping that whatever hole Jasep was in he would dig himself out of, and he would make enough to pay out some distributions so nobody was the wiser. In hindsight this was stupid on my part, and seems more wishful thinking than rational thought. My feeling was that if we let him pay everyone $10 here and $20 there EVERYONE would be better off, even if he didn't have the money in the end; at least some money would have been recovered through distributions. Obviously this didn’t happen and the house of cards crumbled about 10 days into Projekt Sep when people with the same concerns as me started voicing them.
As much as I wished these people would have kept quiet and let the Stake play out for a while I didn't come to Jasep's defense other than saying on VPR that "This shit isn't going to help him play good poker." I do understand why they started grilling Jasep, and actually it seems he may have been secretly over-selling (unconfirmed rumor) so it was probably a good thing it came out sooner rather than later. I pretty much knew what shape he was in financially and was hoping he went on a heater. I still don’t think he set-out to do any of this, more that everything simply snowballed on him, and the miracle card he was hoping for didn’t come in.
Where things got really questionable for me was the non-payment on the first Thursday; missing a day shouldn't matter, you send the payment for 6 instead of 7. If he had sent out a strong distribution the first week I would have felt a whole lot better about the whole situation, and confident he still had the stake money and was using it to play poker. Once the first distribution was lost in a single session one day after it was due I knew he was in trouble, and was likely to have only a buy-in or two of the stake money left. Once he stopped playing I knew he was trying to scrape together a single buy-in --at this time the Projekt Sep videos also started getting more vague which had me concerned (no more hand histories just "good game" "missed some spots" stuff).
Buying VPR
More recently he contacted me about finding a buyer for VPR (something I had approached him about a few months back so he knew he had at least a nibble, especially after slashing the price) he was looking to sell 49% of VPR for $2,500 soon after people started pulling out of the Stake, which told me he was felted or close to it and couldn’t refund these shares; I’ll assume this is where my VPR purchase money would come into the equation.
I started looking into purchasing VPR, asking Jasep a number of questions and asking for financial statements and analytics, and I did a little detective work of my own and came across one of the “Silent Partners”. I asked Jasep how this would work and he said he would take care of them through his remaining 51% of the site, basically saying they owned xx% of his %. Obviously if there were other owners (silent or not) they would have to be consulted on the deal; I was told three people owned percentages of Jasep’s %). At this point I believed he was simply over-selling shares in the site so I stepped back from the deal, but never told him I was not interested.
I will say, when I pressed him about certain things he was pretty open and honest since I already knew most of the answers or this info came out later.
The Threatening E-Mail
I’m also the person he sent the alleged threatening E-Mail to. This was pretty much the icing on the cake for me because he said, “thats my brothers old address and my mothers address” and sent me a screen-shot of the E-Mail. After looking into it this is NOT their address (I found the addresses given were very close but not the right ones and the house numbers were way off, not just a reversal of a couple digits) so my suspicion was he sent the E-Mail to himself and only slightly altered the address (not really sure why, but maybe out of speed if you look into the JoeU sweat at Mohegan timeline). Soon after he contacted me again and asked me to delete it so it wouldn’t wind up online, which is when I realized there was something else amiss, something not bogus enough for his liking. Obv, if someone really sent him a threatening E-Mail the addresses would be correct, and instead of saying xxxx car with Connecticut plates they would have put the license plate number. He also didn’t say, “this is really close to my mother’s house” he said it was his mothers house.
At this point he claimed Projekt Sep was DONE and he would have everyone paid in about 7 days which gave him a reason to end the Stake while he thought he was closing the deal to buy VPR with me, and in his “frantic” state about the e-mail said
“Tell [person who would be buying the site with me] he can buy the whole thing.” Perhaps thinking he could get more money from us by selling the whole site, I don’t really know.
And before anyone asks, no I will not post the addresses as finding the real addresses and names is too simple, and I doubt his parents or brother are involved in this.
So, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I'm really waiting for the 22Q donation to be confirmed or proven false. If the 22Q donation was sent then we will see if Jasep can repay his invesotrs within the 7 days he said he needed. I did E-Mail him Druff's offer about the bank last nght, but haven't heard back yet.
Cliffs for the TL;DR crowd:
- It was unlikely Jasep could make the Foxwoods BAP payments and needed to roll them over into Projekt Sep
- Jasep admitted to me he had about a month of living expenses
- When the shit hit the fan initially and people started pulling out of the stake he approached me about finding a VPR buyer
- After being contacted by JoeU who was gonig to meet him at the casino to sweat him Jasep sent me the alleged threatening E-Mail which has innacurate information
- Jasep says the "stake is over" and everyone will be paid in seven days: And off-handedly offers to sell the whole site (which would have been about $5k, or the original stake money)
I want to believe that the worst Jasep has done was to hustle us a little bit, and I'll have to apologize to him. But as they say, the facts are the facts
Originally Posted by DRK Star
I would just like to chime in here with some information that might be beneficial to many of us here at PFA. While I dont personally know Jasep, or have any involvement of his buy a piece program, I do know a few things about personal grooming. I believe in taking care of myself and follow a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
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