Could the people behind the Mesh Agent spying scheme end up behind bars?
As high-stakes players report that strangers gained unauthorized access to their hole cards online, the question has revived memories of a case that left the forums and landed in a courtroom: that of Peter Jepsen, the European Poker Tour champion convicted of hacking into his opponents' computers.
In the scandal that broke at the end of September, players named Canadian Paul Gregg as a suspect in exploiting remote access to the screens of cash-game regulars on some of the world's most secure poker sites, including GGPoker, the WPN network (home to ACR Poker and PokerKing), and CoinPoker. Mesh Agent is a legitimate remote-management tool; according to the allegations, it was used without authorization to watch victims' cards during play. The link between Gregg and the accounts in question rests on community reports and has yet to be established by any investigation.
Years earlier, Jepsen was accused of chasing the very same edge: knowing exactly what his opponent was holding. His story has everything — an EPT title, record-breaking pots against Tom Dwan, account-sharing disputes, and a spying operation that ended in a criminal conviction. Revisiting it shows why cheating at poker can cost far more than a ban from a poker room.
From Iraq to Winning an EPT Title
Born in 1982, Peter Jepsen is a former military police officer and Iraq war veteran who found poker after being injured in the war. Back home from Iraq and eager to recapture the thrill of army life, he signed up to an online poker site and started out at $0.50/$1 No-Limit Hold'em. He worked his way up through the stakes, and what began as a pastime soon became his profession.
In March 2007, Jepsen won the EPT Warsaw Main Event for $415,679. The victory opened the door to sponsorship deals: he joined Full Tilt's team of professionals and later represented Betfair.
Considering where this story is going, that second poker site's name is quite ironic.
Yet it was online that he made his name. On Full Tilt he played as "Colonel Hazard" and "Peter W Jepsen," and on various European networks he was known as "pokerzp3," "zupp3_," and "ZuppDK."
In that era, taking on poker's biggest names at the highest stakes put a player squarely in the community's spotlight. Jepsen thrived in that environment, his sessions watched by railbirds and every result dissected on the forums.
Record Pots & Public Feud with Tom Dwan
In September 2008, Jepsen showed up at Full Tilt's $500/$1,000 No-Limit Hold'em tables. He was already a fixture in high-stakes Omaha, but his move into Hold'em drew the attention of opponents such as Phil Ivey, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, "trex313," and "whitelime."
In one session, the Dane built a stack of more than $600,000. That same night, he and Dwan played two pots, roughly 45 minutes apart, that set records for online poker at the time.
According to HighStakesDB, Jepsen finished the day up about $346,000, and the month up $372,885.
The numbers came with a question: who was really playing on the account? Dwan suspected another professional was using Jepsen's profile and said so in the table chat and on the Two Plus Two forum. At that stage, the suspicion was account sharing.
Jepsen pushed back, denied the accusation, and invited Full Tilt to check his IP addresses and betting patterns. Brian Hastings joined the debate, while Phil Galfond sided with Dwan. Jepsen even posted a screenshot of his login history to show he had been playing from home in Denmark.
After trading accusations, the two spoke privately. Jepsen wrote that they had cleared the air and that, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. But his run at those tables would not be remembered for the big pots alone.
Borrowed Account & an $800,000 Dispute
Another episode took place in early 2009, though the details only became public in 2013. The opponent this time was Viktor "Isildur1" Blom — and the man actually playing on Jepsen's account was Swedish pro Robert "Gulkines" Flink.
Flink had lost money on his own account and was struggling to move a large sum. Jepsen had about $150,000 available and agreed to let Flink use his account in exchange for a share of the profits.
Over several sessions, Flink won roughly $800,000 from Blom. Publicly, however, the wins were credited to Jepsen, who even gave interviews about them.
Then, Bet365 said it had evidence that someone else had been playing on the account. The site's security team demanded that the $800,000 be returned to Blom. Because Flink had since lost $300,000, only about $650,000 remained in the account, and Jepsen was billed for the $150,000 shortfall.
Jepsen insisted there had been no intent to deceive Blom and that lending the account was simply a way around the difficulty of moving money. For the site, the fact that someone other than the account holder had been playing was reason enough to demand repayment.
A Target of Hackers?
In August 2009, Jepsen opened a thread on Two Plus Two warning of an apparent attempt to hack his computer. By his account, a message sent from another player's MSN profile pointed him to a poker video website.
The site looked legitimate, but when he tried to watch a match, he was prompted to update Flash Player. Jepsen said his suspicions were raised because he already had the latest version and the download came from an address that didn't belong to Adobe.
He said a contact in the police's technology unit had examined the site and found malware on it, and that other high-stakes players had received similar messages. The man who would later be convicted of spying on opponents was, at the time, casting himself as someone looking out for his colleagues' security.
By 2010, his public story had changed tone. In a blog post, Jepsen described the previous year as one of poor results, failed investments, debtors who vanished, and pressure from tax collectors. He also wrote of health problems and the end of a relationship — a far cry from the winner's image he had cultivated.
How Players' Computers Were Compromised
The case that eventually brought Jepsen to court concerned conduct spanning 2008 to 2014. He was accused of installing spyware on other players' computers so he could watch their screens — and see their cards — while playing against them.
One method of reaching victims was to offer supposedly new laptops at bargain prices, in deals involving players in Denmark, Las Vegas, and Thailand. The software was also allegedly installed via USB drives.
Among the alleged victims were Danish players Alex "AlexKP" Petersen and Jakob "Lottenice" Rasmussen, both described as close to Jepsen. Petersen reportedly suffered heavy losses playing PLO on iPoker, while Rasmussen lost more than $100,000 on PokerStars to an account attributed to Jepsen.
According to an anonymous source, Jepsen offered $800,000 in compensation before the police took over the case — an offer that was reportedly refused. Such accounts help piece together the background to the allegations, but criminal liability would ultimately depend on the investigation and the evidence presented in court.
From Complaint to Conviction
In October 2014, eight players filed a joint complaint with the Danish police. That December, authorities confirmed an investigation was under way but did not name the two suspects initially identified. Within the poker community, Jepsen was quickly pegged as the main one.
The case took around five years to reach a verdict. At trial, three witnesses testified that Jepsen had admitted to installing the programs on the victims' computers.
In December 2019, the Copenhagen City Court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. The court had arrived at a three-year term but reduced it by six months because of delays in the case. It also ordered the confiscation of around 26.4 million Danish kroner — roughly $3.96 million at the time. Jepsen denied the charges and appealed.
The appeal produced a new ruling. On December 15, 2020, the Østre Landsret (the High Court of Eastern Denmark) increased the sentence to three years and set the confiscation at about 22.4 million kroner (~$3.36 million at the time).
The court found proven losses of around 3.45 million kroner (~$517,000 at the time), along with further frauds of unquantified value and attempted fraud. The confiscation exceeded the proven losses because the court ruled that Jepsen had failed to adequately show that a large part of his assets came from legitimate sources.
The Jepsen Case & Mesh Agent: Similarities
The common thread between the two cases is the edge gained by seeing information that is supposed to stay private. In Jepsen's case, the court accepted that watching opponents' screens had been used to commit fraud at online tables.
In the current scandal, the investigation has widened to include the vendors of software that players use. In an updated statement on October 2, 2026, Jurojin said an intruder had selectively tampered with its update packages between June 2025 and January 2026, some of which contained a remote-access tool. The company said it had handed its logs and findings over to the authorities.
The same statement makes an important point about the account names linked to Paul Gregg.
These names emerged from community investigations and have not been confirmed by any official, public inquiry. That distinction matters for following the story without turning suspicion into a verdict.
Jepsen's conviction shows that using compromised computers to cheat opponents can lead to prison time and the seizure of assets. How the Mesh Agent case ends will depend on identifying those responsible, on the evidence, and on the actions of the relevant authorities. But the Dane's story offers a concrete precedent for the question now hanging over poker: those who spy on their opponents' cards may one day have to answer to the law.
