Micon Details The Operational Security Concerns Of Seals With Clubs

Bryan Micon of Seals with Clubs has released a video in which he details some of the previously unknown "operational security" concerns which forced the site offline earlier this month.

Micon alleges that on the 11th of February, armed gaming agents acting for the Nevada Gaming Commission knocked on his front door with a sledge hammer and pointed guns at him in order to serve a search warrant for his involvement with SwC and Bitcoin poker. Micon further alleges that much of his electronic equipment was stolen despite not being charged with a crime.

In the video, Micon also revealed that one of the Seals with Clubs servers, which are hosted with Voxility in Romania, were acting with irregularity but he remains unsure exactly what happened with them.

Despite SwC management quitting as a result of the two incidents, Micon will now push forward with a relaunch of SwC located at swcpoker.eu.

A video transcribe is available below.

Hello the internet. Bryan Micon here. It is story time. A lot of you are wondering, hey you were off of twitter for a moment, Seals with Clubs closed down, SWC Poker is opening, management from Seals with Clubs is leaving, citing, you know, vague circumstances. So I feel you guys probably want to know what's going on, it's probably proper to do so, so, tough tough spot, but you know, this is what i came up with.

So I'm just going to rip it, tell you guys what happened. On the 11th of February, 2015, 8am, a bunch of guys with guns broke down my door, put me in handcuffs, serving a warrant from the Nevada Gaming Commission. Regarding Seals with Clubs and bitcoinpoker. Next eight hours they stole most of my electronics, and as a blogger this of course seriously hindering to my output. Apologies to the $400 computer camera I don't know why I'm dark and whatever, doesn't matter. More important things right now.

At the same time there was an irregularity on one of the Seals with Clubs servers hosted by Voxility in Romania and, it's unclear what happened. The system is of course very secure and has thwarted hacking attempts in the past, so, it is unclear to me from a technical perspective exactly what went down, but the rest of the Seals with Clubs management team quit. They did not want to continue after this, and you know, I do. So, Seals with Clubs will continue to wind down, cash outs are continuing to be processed. All the bitcoins were safe. Math does not bow to guns.

But, the swcpoker is, there is a domain that has a short video up. At this stage.. and a team that I've assembled over the last few days is working extremely hard to reboot it. So, very very soon you will see a swcpoker.eu with the 2.0 software. And i was already planning a trip to Antigua. We were going to take a family vacation for an extended period of time, play some online poker, explore some business ideas, just relax. Unfortunately the timing of which was only a few weeks after this happenned, so, after I was lead out in handcuffs in my underwear, ah, you know, it was pretty clear that it was proper to leave sooner rather than later.

And, I didn't really want my two year old daughter whom i love very much to grow up in a police state where creativity is often met with guns and handcuffs and what-not. And that's just not the environment i think is proper for a.. my daughter to grow up in. That's not what i want to teach her is proper.

And, this is the short story of what happenned. It was a search warrant from Nevada Gaming regarding Seals with Clubs and bitcoinpoker that was served at gunpoint, and I was handcuffed and led out half-naked into my front lawn and uh, this is just of course, a symptom of how a police state acts, and they enforce, umm you know, they had made it clear that they had.. were very familiar with my social feeds and my entire output as a journalist and they.. nevada gaming.. they.. It's unfortunate that they knew about a two year old child in the home and yet still felt necessary to bring many many many men with guns pointed at me. They know i'm a non-violent person, they know i'm a peaceful man who has a baby and a wife within his house. And they still felt the need to, you know, they don't, no call.

I asked them straight up – I was just kind of wondering – why wouldn't you call me? You know I'm a reasonable person, you know, you've been reading my feeds as you said. You know, they.. very weak answers to that and obviously it's against all rational thought that uh.. to think that they.. that they.. you know 10 men with guns would need to.. you can steal my equipment if just the 10 men sit outside. You knock on the door, maybe you call me, you know like "hey, i'm going to steal your equipment or we're going to come in with guns." Ok, you know, I'll come out with my hands up, take the equipment. But you know, I don't think that's right either, I don't think it's right to steal a guy's stuff like that.

I don't think I was doing anything unethical. So, you know, it's a big mess of course from a personal perspective, but going forward from a business perspective we're going to relaunch seals with.. err, swcpoker – I'm going to have to really get out of that habit. But, very traumatizing for the family of course, but you know, we're doing all right here in Antigua. It's beautiful, it's much less.. it's not a police state, everybody's nice. It's really a nice change. But, we will see you later on the swcpoker.eu and I'll have more updates later. Thank you for watching.

4 thoughts on “Micon Details The Operational Security Concerns Of Seals With Clubs

  1. Pretty much of a non-burger here. PS. When law-enforcement removes your hardwRe it's called 'impounding', not 'stealing'. And if they were so brutal, how come he got to leave the country with, apparently, sufficient assets to underwrite an expensive new venture? Something smells pretty bad with his whole story.

  2. I agree…this isn't adding up. I smell bullsh!t on this one.

  3. I agree ,
    doesn't make sense . I'm pretty sure you cant leave the country with a pending court case, and i very seriously doubt they raided his house and then pressed no charges . nice story micon if you like bullshit

  4. Property can be seized in a raid even if no charges are brought, and these can be kept by the department doing the raid.
    Calling it 'impounding' doesn't change the forced breaking, entering, detainment and taking of items that are not owned by the ones taking them.

    It has become common enough that there is an active discussion about how to make it less corrupt.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

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