Is this $1K bonus email from empire genuine or phishing?

[baronzeus]

On a raked day you have to play 300 hands. This is according to Party (unless they have changed it)

[jaym96822]

Empire is great, this is on top of the Royal Flush free $100/month too. As long as they keep it up, I'll happily contribute my $7000/month in rake. Not sure why other sites don't engage in similar marketing to attract high volume players.

[jaym96822]

Well that sucks:

Thank you for contacting customer support.

There is no rake taken in tournament hands, hence you cannot obtain raked hands through Single and Multi Table tournaments.

If you have any more concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact us.

Best regards,

Louise
Empire Poker
Customer Support Team
www.ep.com

[mtgordon]

Anyone have any idea how they were selected for this? Maybe we could figure it out if people were willing to put what levels they play and approx. how many hands/month they play on Empire.

[grouchie]

maybe they've been following the "high rollers" threads on here and decided to contact the "high rollers' who play through them and give them some goodies to keep them there instead of letting them stray elsewhere.

That would be friggin weird.

[HRFats]

I received an email at 12:06am Aug 1st that says "$500 real cash into your account" in the subject line. It's from promotions@empire.poker-marketing-team.com with nothing but the Empire logo that is linked to http://www.empirepoker.com/index.htm which APPEARS to be the home page. I opened a new browser and typed in the URL and then signed in. I don't see anything. I'm not sure what to do from here. Any ideas? Is this legit? I emailed support almost 20 hours ago and have no response...

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
I received an email at 12:06am Aug 1st that says "$500 real cash into your account" in the subject line. It's from promotions@empire.poker-marketing-team.com with nothing but the Empire logo that is linked to http://www.empirepoker.com/index.htm which APPEARS to be the home page. I opened a new browser and typed in the URL and then signed in. I don't see anything. I'm not sure what to do from here. Any ideas? Is this legit? I emailed support almost 20 hours ago and have no response...

[/ QUOTE ]

This one looks fake... log into your real empire account now, make sure all your moeny is there and change your password.

[Mason Hellmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
Uhh hwo can it be fake?

[/ QUOTE ]
It's very easy to make a link look like it goes to one site, while it actually points somewhere else. This is a very common scam; it's called "phishing".

For example: http://www.twoplustwo.com/ Many people would just assume this link goes to 2+2 and click on it, when it actually points to Google. The scammer then makes a page that looks just like the target site, but sends the user's data to the scammer.

Definitely something everyone should be aware of.

[Mason Hellmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
It is legit. If the official site redirects you there then it is legit.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm 90% sure OP is saying that the link text was "http://www.empirepoker.com/1000offer", while the target was actually "http://www.epvip.com/1000offer/". If that's the case, Empire unwittingly made their legitimate e-mail look like a phishing attempt.

Although I didn't receive a $1K offer I did get this email today that said:

You have been awarded a bonus amount of 10.00 and the money has been added into your account. You are free to use this bonus amount to play at Empire Poker. However, if you wish to cashout the 10.00, you will need to play 300 raked hands before 11-AUG-2005 EST.

I haven't played on Empire in months and only had a couple of dollars left in my account. I just checked it tonite and sure enough there is an extra $10 in my account. It not a large sum but it's still free money.