Remember the day that the purity of our live poker tournaments got tarnished with a crazy heist (that by-the-way had nothing on Ocean’s 11, but hey), armed to the teeth with revolvers and even old school machetes, finding their way home with some of the prize pool money? This incident took place on at the Grand Hyatt Hotel located in Potsdammer Platz in downtown Berlin on the 6th of March of this year.
These guys were so brash and brazen, and it might even have been a spur of the moment thing in the way they were armed and how they were filmed enjoying a local McDonald’s just hours prior to the burglary. Anyway, these guys got away with the deed. But as you know for sure, the long arm of the law will always catch baddies, no matter how long it takes.
German Authorities later pointed out that the bad guys’ successful heist was worth around €242,000, or around $290,000 US in prize pool money. The tournament went on after the scare, with 29-year old American Kevin McPhee taking home €1,000,000 for taking down the tournament after defeating Finn Ilari Tahkokalio heads-up.
The investigations went on, and on Thursday May 27th, an arrest warrant went out for a Mohammed Abou-C. (identified like that because of German privacy laws) and he got arrested just one day later in the early hours of Friday, May 28th while driving through the German capital. The prosecutor Martin Steltner gave some light on details of how Abou-C. did what he did. Apparently, he got a peek at where the meat of the money was held while playing himself in a poker tourney. This info would then be given to the heavy hitters who wielded machetes to carry out the heist.
I guess that when you are a wanted man, it should make sense to get the hell out of the place where the deed took place. Apparently Mr. Abou-C. would disagree with me on that one however as he leisurely stayed behind within Berlin. Perhaps he was trying to score another big hit at another big poker tournament?
This incident had as prime consequence an increase of the amount of security on hand, and security measures as a whole, of poker tournaments everywhere. Something good came out of it after all.
With this latest arrest, it marks the total number of people who have ben arrested in connection with this crime at six. One piece of advice guys, and especially mastermind Abou-C. as you’ll be in it for a long time to come, don’t drop the soap!