Home / Poker News September 2009 / KGC points finger at scape-goat in UB cheating scandal
KGC points finger at scape-goat in UB cheating scandal
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2009-09-15 03:26
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission, the entity which gave Ultimate Bet an operating license, has finished the investigation it conducted into the cheating that had occurred at the site a while ago and which had set the entire online poker community on fire at the time.
The results of the investigation were announced the other day and the conclusion was a $1.5 million fine for Tokwiro, as well as the obligation to return $22 million to the damaged parties (players).
The company currently operating Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, Tokwiro, has retained its KGC license pending additional conditions, on account of how it handled the situation in the past 12 months.
A scape-goat was found as well. 2004 WSOP Main Event champion, Russ Hamilton was the player who supposedly made the most out of the cheating scandal. Although the KGC acknowledged that there were no fewer than 117 names used in the scheme, together with 23 poker accounts, no other names were made public. According to the KGC, identifying other people involved in the cheating proved to be a challenge, but the majority of accounts, names, IP addresses and computer devices used to perpetrate the cheating belonged to Russ Hamilton.
The 2004 Main Event Champion wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the robbery though. 31 other people were directly involved or somehow associated with the activity, their names however were not made public by the KGC.
Though establishing criminal culpability exceeds the jurisdiction of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which is a regulating body for online poker and not one mandated with hunting down and prosecuting criminals, based on the results of its investigation, it concluded that those directly involved or associated in the Ultimate Bet cheating could be held criminally responsible. To that end, the KGC has already contacted the law enforcement agencies mandated to criminally prosecute the perpetrators.
The KGC report also established a series of other interesting facts. The cheating at Ultimate Bet had been going on between June 2003 and December 2007, for a massive 4.5 years (!). The cheating had started before Tokwiro acquired the site and as such it had no knowledge of the criminal activities.
Among the reasons why Tokwiro’s license was not revoked was that the company fully cooperated with the KGC in identifying accounts, names and people involved in the cheating scandal.
Those involved in the cheating in any shape or form are no longer associated with Tokwiro and Ultimate Bet.
Tokwiro has already returned some $22,054,351 to players victimized by the perpetrators, a sum which represents the largest ever player refund in the history of online poker. The amount was calculated using an algorithm which had player interest as its top priority.
Tokwiro was fined and forced to pay the costs of the KGC investigation as well.
Only two of the accounts used for cheating (AuditMonster1 and AuditMonster2) could actually access hole card information. These two accounts were never actually used in play, rather they were used to gather hole card information which was put to use through the other involved accounts. The portion of code which made this possible for the two users has been disabled on Feb 2, 2008.
