WSOP bracelet winner Francesco Garofalo disqualified and payout denied

The winner of a World Series of Poker Online event in September has had his win cancelled and payout and WSOP bracelet denied after being disqualified.

In September, Francesco Garofalo (aka forzaitalia) was a surprise winner of the star-studded World Series of Poker Online $25,000 GGMillion$ Super High Roller Championship. He outlasted a 230-entry field (140 players, 90 re-entries) that included some top poker pros like Brynn Kenney, Adrian Mateos, Daniel Negreanu, and Ole Schemion.

For winning the tournament Garofalo was originally awarded $1.1 million and a WSOP bracelet. That money and bracelet have been denied following the disqualification. The reason for the disqualification was not revealed by the WSOP or GGPoker.

They did confirm that Garofalo has been permanently banned from the site, and his winning were redistributed among all other players that made the money in the tournament.

This redistribution delivered the largest payout increase to tournament runner-up Chris Brewer. For his second-place finish Brewer originally received $865,335. After the redistribution he received an additional $256,866, bringing his total payout to $1,122,201. However, Brewer was not awarded the WSOP bracelet.

Third place finisher Brynn Kenney received an additional $198,070 on top of his original $667,265 payout.

Patrick Leonard, who originally finished fourth in the tournament, tweeted about waking up to an email notification about his redistribution payment from GGPoker, which added an extra $155,733 to his payout.

The ban and redistribution were among the largest ever recorded in an online tournament but not the largest. In the 2007 PokerStars WCCOOP Main Event Natalie Teltscher (aka TheV0id) won the $1,378,331 but was disqualified after it was discovered she did not play the tournament herself.