This author was about to head to bed on Monday night when he noticed a Yahoo News headlinecontaining the words “sextortion” and “poker players.” The article, as it turned out, involved Joe Sebok (pictured), who was the target of a sextortion scheme in 2010, as Yahoo put it. On Monday, prison terms were handed down in the case.

The Reuters article posted on Yahoo News read in part, “Prosecutors say Tyler Schrier, 23, and Keith James Hudson, 39, took part in a so-called ‘sextortion’ scheme targeting poker pro Joe Sebok in the fall of 2010, threatening to post the pictures and intimate emails online if he and other victims did not pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Schrier received 42 months in prison, while Hudson received 24. Charges that both faced included conspiracy, extortion, unauthorized access to a protected computer, and unauthorized access to a protected computer for purposes of financial gain.

On the sentencing, one person on Two Plus Two posted, “If someone broke into my email with malicious intent, stole naked photos of me, tried to blackmail me, and then released the photos when I didn’t pay, I would not think that two years was excessive.”

Speaking on the setbacks he faced as a result of the extortion, Sebok was quoted by Reuters as saying, “I was no longer able to maintain my then-current level of participation in the poker industry, representing the brands that I had been previously, as well as greatly destroying my ability to do so with new companies moving forward.”

The same article described that Schrier “had extorted more than $26,000 from professional poker players in exchange for agreeing not to reveal information regarding their online poker activities… Hudson obtained emails and intimate photographs from Sebok’s account and sent them to Schrier, who threatened to post the materials online unless he was provided with money or credits in online poker accounts.”

According to the L.A. Times, “Sebok and the other victims in this case did not make any payments” regarding the extortion in question. Additionally, “In November 2010, Schrier sent an email with a nude photograph of Sebok to approximately 100 individuals.”

Sebok, who has nearly one million followers on Twitter, was recently seen working at Vinify, a winery in California. On the move from poker to wine, Sebok said at the time, “The game of poker is great and has been good to me over the years. But at the end of the day, if you’re not doing other stuff, all you are doing is counting money.”

According to the Hendon Mob, Sebok has not cashed in a live tournament since late 2011 and has nearly $1.9 million in tracked live scores to his credit. In late 2009, he signed on to become the Media and Operations Consultant for UB, telling PocketFives at the time, “With UB, all of those concerns are rightfully founded. The situation unfolded badly. The current regime handled it poorly. They weren’t the ones in there cheating, but there’s no question they handled things badly. Hopefully, me being involved there will change a lot of that.”

Sebok has also been involved with a variety of media endeavors during his tenure in the poker industry, including hosting the news show “Poker2Nite,” which lasted two seasons, as well as captaining PokerRoad. According to PokerNews, Sebok and his fellow UB pros were let go in May 2011, one month following Black Friday. The room has since slipped into liquidation along with its sister site, Absolute Poker.

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