Just days after winning his second 2015 WSOP bracelet, high-stakes pro Brian Stinger885Hastings began to receive some unwelcome media attention. The 27-year-old was accused by fellow poker pros of violating PokerStars’ terms of service by using a virtual private network (VPN) to obfuscate his location and play on the site from the United States.

At the same time, they say he gained unfair advantage by misleading his opponents as to his true identity. While many pros have remained silent on the issue, Australian grinder James Andy McLEOD Obst (pictured) is speaking out and blasts Hastings’ response to the criticism.

In an interview with CalvinAyre, Obst called Hastings’ purported actions “pure scum” and expressed his discontent that other high-stakes pros didn’t seem to be angry at the 27-year-old. “I played a number of hands with him in the SCOOP and, yeah, you feel cheated finding out later you were actually playing at a disadvantage against someone who is already one of the top players in the game,” said Obst.

In fact, it was after a SCOOP tournament that poker pro David BakesBaker suggested that Hastings had been playing on PokerStarsfrom the US under an Ireland-based account called NoelHayes.

“So, after I final tabled the SCOOP $2k, a bunch of well-known pros message me telling me Brian Hastings (pictured) was behind the NoelHayes account on Stars,” Baker Tweeted to his 10,000 followers.

In the interview, Obst called Baker a “true hero” for outing Hastings and described the poker industry as having “such a stench that almost no one has gone near… for fear of having to smell it.”

After Baker’s Tweet, Hastings was compelled to respond in a post on 2+2, where he tried to deflect the issue, made condescending remarks toward posters, and suggested he had given so much to the community that he should be praised, not criticized. “I’ve never turned someone down when they’ve asked for strategy advice or whatever,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that many of you don’t really understand or care about that.”

Obst described the poker pro’s comments as laughable and summarized the 27-year-old’s claims in his own words. “[Hastings]claims he doesn’t care what ‘strangers on the internet’ think despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” he began. “[Hastings] suggests that those who express dissension toward his replies are displaying sociopathic tendencies,” he continues. “[Hastings] thinks that the people coming after him for this are the ones doing real harm to the game.”

When asked how PokerStars should handle the situation, Obst called for the site to simply do “something” and “something transparent” at that. “Players have been losing faith in the game, and in PokerStars, for a long time now and this really feels like a tipping point where we will find out whose side they are truly on.”

Obst furthered his argument against Hastings, whom he says regularly posts bad beats on Twitter for the same internet strangers about whom he supposedly doesn’t care. He claims that in the process, Hastings also criticizes his peers “in no uncertain terms as though he’s never made a bad play.”

Want the latest poker headlines and interviews? Follow PocketFives on Twitterand Like PocketFives on Facebook.