This week, Ultimate Bet’s parent company, Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, released brand new information about its investigation into the cheating scandal that rocked the online poker room to its foundation. The results of Tokwiro’s investigation, which has been ongoing ever since the allegations of dubious behavior surfaced in January, have been turned over to its regulatory body, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC). In case you have no idea what the KGC is, it’s the Canadian-based organization which oversees the action at the major online poker rooms, including Absolute Poker, PokerRoom, PokerStars, and Full Tilt Poker, just to name a few that you’ve heard of. The KGC licenses and regulates its clients, meaning the ultimate burden of resolving the scandal falls squarely on its shoulders.
Paul Leggett, UB and AP’s Chief Operating Officer, stated in a press release distributed on Friday, “Make no mistake: our management team is outraged that this cheating occurred on our site through illicit software placed on the UB servers prior to our purchasing Ultimate Bet. Tokwiro is aggressively pursuing legal avenues of redress in order to protect and compensate our players and the business. Rest assured that we will release more information to the poker community and to the public at large as we enforce our and our players’ rights.” Those are pretty strong words from one of the most powerful men in the online poker world.
Players have been outraged at the KGC, which, until a few days ago, had remained completely silent on the Ultimate Bet issue. Finally, in a statement released on Wednesday, the organization commented, “Unfortunately, the KGC’s actions were not well communicated to the poker industry or public at large, creating an incorrect perception that the KGC was doing nothing.” Although the KGC’s press release does not state any specific news on the investigation, the poker world can breathe a collective sigh of relief that the KGC is actually acting on the matter.
Ultimate Bet’s information states that 19 user accounts and 88 screen names were associated with the scandal. Each account changed its screen names several times in order to avoid detection by UB authorities and the online poker community as a whole. Moreover, the account that was able to display hole card information was never actually gambled on. Rather, it was used while other accounts were opened to scam unsuspecting users out of their money.
The individuals in questions appear to be the former owners of Ultimate Bet, who sold the successful online poker room to Tokwire in 2006. However, no charges have been filed and, as the press release notes, legal action may eventually be taken against those involved. Former UB owner Russ Hamilton was interviewed by Poker Road Radio’s Barry Greenstein and Joe Sebok, who then reported their findings to the listening audience. Greenstein did not suspect that Hamilton was involved. The jury, needless to say, is still out on this entire issue.
Meanwhile, details of the newly-formed CEREUS, an amalgamation of the player bases of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, have yet to be released. More information was expected on Friday, but a press release or any indication of what will occur has not materialized. CEREUS will become the third largest poker network you can play on. Mac users can even play on a web-based version of Absolute Poker. UB, as it stands, is a Windows-only online poker site.
Keep up to date on the latest from UB by checking back to MacPoker.net.