An amateur poker player has admitted he faked a terminal cancer diagnosis to scam his way into the biggest tournament on the circuit. Rob Mercer raised tens of thousands of dollars through a GoFundMe page after claiming he had terminal cancer and only months to live.
The 37-year-old fulfilled his “dream” in June, playing in the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas, thanks to donations from the people he duped. Mercer claimed he had stage four colon cancer and had 6-12 months to live. His crowd-funding effort raised more than $30,000.
But donors became increasingly sceptical about the validity of his story due to vague answers about his condition and his behaviour in Sin City, where he stayed in a luxurious suite at the Bellagio that was paid for by kind-hearted members of the poker community.
Several people have accused the Vallejo, California native of lying about his condition for financial gain and Mercer has come clean. “I did lie about having colon cancer. I don’t have colon cancer,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“I used that to cover my situation. What I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have told people I have colon cancer. I did that just as a spur-of-the-moment thing when someone asked me what kind of cancer I had. I’m sorry for not being honest about what my situation was. If I would have done that from day one, who knows what would have happened.”
Mercer was part of a record-breaking 10,043-strong field at the Horseshoe and Paris casinos on the Vegas strip, and he busted before the money bubble, leaving empty-handed. Daniel Weinman was the winner of the tournament, banking $12.1 million.
Mercer, who has deleted his social media profiles, has confirmed GoFundMe has contacted him for breaching its terms of service. But he says he has no plans to repay the money donated to him because he “believes he has undiagnosed breast cancer” and the donations were made because he was in poor health. However, GoFundMe has contacted people who donated to Mercer’s page will receive a refund.
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“Obviously, I was just trying to keep up with my story,” Mercer said, trying to explain his actions. “I didn’t want to get exposed because it looks bad. It does look bad. I lied. I’m not going to deny that. I lied. I should have just been transparent and comfortable with what is going on with me and tell people what was happening.
“At the end of the day I lied to a lot of people because I was scared to tell the truth. And I guess I’ll have to pay for that.”
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