Home / Poker News September 2009 / Tokwiro not involved in UB Cheating scandal
Tokwiro not involved in UB Cheating scandal
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-09-16 11:44
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) has recently released its report following a year long investigation of the cheating incident which is said to have plagued Ultimate Bet for the better part of 4 and a half years.
The report pointed a finger at the perpetrators, singling out former WSOP Main Event Champion Russ Hamilton, and provided various details of their MO. Also quite newsworthy was the fact that the report cleared Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, the parent company behind Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, of any wrong-doing in the scandal, iterating that fact that the KGC’s investigation was not only paid for by Tokwiro, but that the company fully cooperated all through the ordeal providing valuable inside data and leads to the identities of the cheaters.
The KGC report has clearly pointed it out that not only was Tokwiro never directly involved in the scandal, it had no knowledge of it up until the moment of its discovery by a group of savvy players for whom the unnatural winning patterns exhibited by several user accounts had rung an alarm bell.
The cheating started well before Tokwiro took over operations, and it continued under Tokwiro control, undetected for a while. The reason why the cheating took so long to detect was in the MO of the perpetrators. They only used two “superuser” accounts, which had access to players’ hole card information, but they never actually took any of those accounts to the table. Rather, the information gathered through them was relayed to several users who played under one of the over 100 player names and 32 accounts identified to have been involved in the cheating.
As a result of the scandal, Tokwiro has already reimbursed over $22 million to players affected by the cheating, and it has paid a $1.5 million fine as well. According to the report, all elements deemed unsuitable have been weeded out from Tokwiro’s management team and the company is looking forward to push forth with both its brands following the clearing of its name.
Tokwiro’s CEO, Paul Legett has underlined the importance of the KGC report, pointing it out that an entirely new management team has taken over poker operations at Tokwiro. Bound by no further legal burdens, and with its name cleared, Tokwiro is keen to let the world know that Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are safe to play at again. Whether or not this declaration of an involved party will prove satisfactory to their players (and would be players) remains to be seen. One thing is certain though: an independent third party’s take on the issue would probably carry much more weight.
To that end, the KGC has required Tokwiro to submit all their game logs to independent third party auditors and never to hire senior personnel without the approval of the KGC.
Steps already taken to prevent such incidents in the future include overhauled rules concerning screen name changes and different VIP player treatment. If you happen to sign up to UB now, and you see one of the 117 screen names involved in the cheating, don’t be alarmed: due to the site’s policy of allowing discarded screen names to be re-used, they now belong to perfectly legit players, not involved with any sort of fraud.
