Poker Cheat José "Girah" Macedo And His Meteoric Fall From Grace

The so-called online poker prodigy José “Girah” Macedo rose to fame after announcing back in March 2011 on the Two Plus Two poker forum that he was an 18 year-old Portuguese poker prodigy who had succeeded in winning $2 million from an initial $30 deposit playing at Betfair.
After posting his results and an in-depth description of the epic journey he undertook on his way to poker eminence, he soon became the toast of the poker community eventually being offered a lucrative sponsorship deal at Lock Poker.
Now, however, the 18 year-old poker player from Portugal has seen his name and reputation crash and burn after admitting to an online scam in which he defrauded his friends out of $30,000.
As more and more information comes to light, it would appear José “Girah” Macedo’s ‘sting’ revolved around a Skype strategy discussion group in which he was involved. Macedo would then offer to ‘rail’ or ‘sweat’ players when they were online in order to offer advise on their play after the session ended.
However, players became suspicious after Macedo seemed particularly obsessed with pushing them to play against an online player called “Sauron1989,” whom he described as a spewy, fish.
In an incredible twist, “Sauron1989” then turned out to be Macedo himself, who used knowledge of his opponent’s hole cards in real time to part them from their cash.
After the evidence mounted up against him and was presented on the TwoPlusTwo Forums, José “Girah” Macedo decided to come clean and offer re-payment plus compensation to his hapless victims. 
Soon after Macedo’s sponsored site LockPoker.com said,”All of us at Lock are horrified and incredibly disappointed by Jose’s actions. Within 10 minutes of finding out about the fraudulent behavior his LockPRO contract was terminated and his account was banned permanently. Jose’s has defrauded the players, the art of poker and the basic human relationship.”
In the meantime, the poker community has reacted with disgust at the latest scandal to hit online poker, with several posters even suggesting Macedo may not have been working alone and concocted the whole Portuguese poker prodigy story to enact the elaborate scam.
One thing for sure, however, is that there is a lot more to this story to come, which likely will surface over the coming weeks.
Speaking out on the fiasco, I leave you with the words of Canadian poker pro Terrence Chan, who commented:
“To be perfectly frank, poker is ripe for the picking for cheats. Macedo’s scam is not even remotely the first social engineering scam that has separated intelligent poker pros from their money; it is simply one of the most dirty, devious, under-handed, and chilling ones.”