Scammer(subjective) Alert: BEWARE OF KIM SHANNON

 










This blog, the situation, and the things noted in this blog are all subjective and are a matter of how I perceive the situation(opinion). What is fact about this case will soon be discovered and determined in court. Until then, please read this warning message and form your own opinion. Thank you.

I could say that I'll try to keep this short. But that'd be really hard to do n I hate making false promises.

I'm writing this today because the community needs to be made aware of the scammery of Ms. KIM SHANNON, who currently is employed with PartyPoker as a poker media journalist.

Here's the low down:

In September 2012, while at the Borgata Open, I met Kim Shannon for what may have been the 2nd or 3rd time. She was doing some media coverage for the WPT event, and I ended up doing an interview with her. We quickly found that we bonded. When Kim and I went for drinks later, she told me about how her exboyfriend, Travis Williams, had robbed her of a tonnn of money and changed the locks on their apartment in Maryland, leaving her essentially homeless.

I've always stuck up for the underdogs and I've always been compelled to help people in need, especially if I have the means to do so. In this case, I was living in a house in Margate, NJ on a 6-month lease from Sept-Feb. I've done this a few years. I had a 3 bdrm house all to myself, and so I figured I could, at the very least, let her stay with me while she figured her stuff out and got back on her feet.

As the weeks passed, it became more obvious that Kim was becoming a permanent fixture. So, we made an agreement that all expenses would be chopped evenly for her term living there. This would include all expenses, such as rent, house supplies, food, cigarettes(I would buy cartons and she would just take packs out), etc. The arrangement was bearable, but definitely far from optimal. I felt a bit disrespected in my own space when she'd leave a mess and like fake hair from her hair extensions was all over my house. But it was whatever... I bit my tongue. We're in mid November 2012 at this point. I'm planning on going on a 10-day vacation to the islands in just a few days. I check my mailbox before I leave my Margate house for the next few weeks, and I see a letter that was marked for Kim. It was from "The Rhode Island Department of Child Support Services."

"Wait... what?! Child support services?! In Kim's name?!" Did I ever have any indication that Kim had a kid prior to this? None. Did seeing this envelope marked to her in my mailbox make me feel like Kim had a big secret she was keeping? Absolutely. It was hard not to make assumptions in this spot. Naturally, I deduced that perhaps Kim had a kid, that she doesn't take care of, and owes child support. That is what made and still makes the most sense to me. I felt deceived and I felt super concerned that I'd ended up letting a bad person into my life and home.

As the alarm bells were going off in my head, I decided that with the end of the lease only a month and a half away, it was time to confront Kim about her owed money to me, get it settled, and get her out. I decided it was in my best interest not to bring up the kid thing if I didn't want to have an ugly confrontation with her prior to asking to be paid lol. So, I said nothing about this to her, and left the envelope in the mailbox for her to hopefully retrieve on her own.

During her time living there, we'd kept a list that was lonnng and full of small $ amounts owed for each time we had gone out, gone shopping, took a pack of cigs... I basically always marked it on the list on the fridge so we could keep track. Before I left for the islands, we added it all up together and agreed that our number was $5500. Within a few days, she told me that she had asked her step-father for a 5k loan, and that he had agreed. I was obv happy to take 5k now and work out the other $500 later.

I really wanted this to be handled before I left for vacation. She told me that she would have her step-father x-fer the money to my Bank of America account since he also used that bank. I waited and waited. No money ever did make it into my account before my vacation. The promise of transfer bled into December when these messages went down(while I was away on vacation):

While I was on vacation, probably two weeks after repayment was initially discussed, I still hadn't heard from her or received any funds into my account. I email her this:

She finally calls me saying that it turns out her step-father actually isn't comfortable doing account-to-account transfers within the bank system with someone he does know(lol?). She said that instead, he would be sending her a 5k check. She said it would be so simple because he was writing a Bank Of America account check, so she would be able to cash it for actual cash-in-hand from our local branch, and then immediately just deposit it into my account at the same bank branch. I waited another week or so. I contact her pretty upset that this isn't being resolved quicker, and she responds with a shocking taleeee!!!

Here is what Kim proceeded to tell me when we next chatted:

That her step-father sent her the check. That she ,for whatever reason, took a taxi to a non-Bank of America bank, and cashed the check for cash $$$(is this even possible?). She claims that she was going to go right to my bank and deposit this amount right away, but that instead she left Margate because she had to run to Harrahs AC quickly to do something. She claimed that she was at Harrahs for a mere 45 minutes, and that in that time frame, either the money was stolen or she dropped it out of her purse... but that IT WAS GONE!

I obviously have scammer bells ringing sooo loud n clear in my ears! I pretty much snapped on her at this point and told her to get out of my house. It was Christmas, but I honestly didn't even care. I told her this run around was absurd and that story makes no sense. I felt like she was playing me for a fool.

She did leave my house that Christmas when I told her to. And I didn't hear from her again for a year until this past January. She texted me acting like she was sorry for dodging me for a full year, saying she wanted to make up and pay me off and squash this stuff. I played cool/agreeable because I wanted to get paiiid. What was funny was that she had recently gotten a job with PartyPoker and there was the Borgata Winter Open coming up. She knew she'd be there... and she knew I'd be there. And so it isn't really surprising that she hit me up to reconcile the debt before a potentially nasty face-to-face run-in in our workplace.

More proof here.... texts from Jan 15th, 2013:

  Cont'd Message --->















                                                
 She made excuse after excuse for that entire month of BWO to keep me at bay. Once the series was over, she was MIA again. A good old fashion dose of "out of sight out of mind." I kept trying to contact her but she eventually told me I was "too hard to deal with" and blew me off completely and stopped responding to my texts altogether. It wasn't until I last-minute decided to play the WPT 15k at Borgata this past April that I had my next unexpected run-in with Kim.

I hollered across the Signature room to her, "Hey, you ever gunna call me about the 5k you owe me Kim Shannon?" She then approached me, apologized again, and asked me to text her to resolve the matter. I did so. And the same thing again... I never heard from or saw the girl after that on that trip.

Kim had long ago blocked me from facebook(lol). But when I noticed her boyfriend(possibly husband now?), Travis Williams(also possibly currently employed with PartyPoker, not sure) posted a picture of himself, Kim, and their new baby this past spring.... my jaw dropped. I hit up Travis asking if he knew how I could get ahold of Kim regarding the debt. I explained to him how now that they are like a family, that I'm assuming their finances are becoming shared, and that I needed to be paid. No help there obv.

A month later, WSOP is approaching. Kim texts me saying she wants to pay me off and that she will be in Vegas doing coverage for PartyPoker so she'd be able to meet me with cash. Here was our interaction pre-WSOP 2014, when I asked her if she would be paying me the full $5500 in cash in Vegas:

Of course again, she's only contacting me when she knows she may run into me in person, and again, she ended up completely dodging me this entire trip. Towards the end of her expected stay in Vegas, she claimed that PartyPoker was extending her stay there and that I shouldn't worry because it gave her a few more days to handle it. Then the next day she claimed that PartyPoker changed their mind and were sending her to L.A to do some coverage, and then when I offered to drive/fly to L.A to drive her to the bank and collect, she told me that something happened to her baby's nanny and she was now on a flight from L.A to Philly. Just an absurd amount of run-around.

I kept contacting her even after she had allegedly gotten back to Philly, telling her that I was over this game, and that I was going to escalate this matter if we didn't get a plan of action together to get this debt paid off. Not only was she unable to meet with me physically, but she just wouldn't even respond to my texts about what the hell was going on with this money for a week+ at a time. I gave her more than a month of fair warning that I would go public to the poker community about the issue, and that I would sue her if I needed to. It was at this point, that after a year and a half of dodging me making promises to pay me the full $5500 she owed me, that she began with this rant about how she doesn't owe me that much and how I need to make her an itemized list of alllll the expenses(many of which were paid in cash and that I may not remember nearly 2 yrs later without or fridge sticky-note list). I told her I have our text and email agreements on $5500 spread out over the course of this fiasco.

She now is telling me that she will only pay me something in the neighborhood of $3000-$3500... which is just some completely random and arbitrary number. I have no idea where she pulled this number from, because $5500 has been the only number we have been discussing getting paid off this entire time. 

I begged her to handle this with fairness, honesty, and integrity. But each time I text her, I'm met with this aimlessly non-productive and angry resistance. I've offered to send her copies of her own messages to me over the year/s to help refresh her memory that we already have verbal and email/text agreements established on this amount. I've offered to go to mediation with her and set it up for us. I told her that the last thing I want to do is drag her name through the mud, or make her have to take time away from her new baby/family or time away from work, or spend extra money on getting a lawyer... I've literally laid it all out for her to see that lying and resisting is only going to cost her in the long run. But she doesn't seem to have regard for what is right.

I hate doing this and I wish that I didn't have to be the type of person in a situation who would ever even have to write a scammer alert. But this woman has left me no other choice in the matter. I do want my money, and I do want our community to know that this is not someone you should be lending money to if you don't want this type of situation to happen to you.

PartyPoker also should know this information. They're employing someone who is doing scummy things to well-known poker players, and the word will travel. I'm going to guess that the rest of the poker community, much like myself, doesn't take kindly to this type of thing.

This is so dumb that this woman is making me take her to court. But... girl's gotta do what girl's gotta do :/

Anyway, please let your friends know to look out for this person, and thanks for reading this if you've made it this far lol
<3