GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 6 - September 2008

Page Title << Continued from page 36 The statement adds that “the perpetrator of the scheme was immediately termi- nated upon discovery and the case was turned over to the KGC,” and that “AP has fully corrected the problem that allowed its system to be unfairly manipulated and is working to enhance its existing safe- guards.” AP also says that it is “committed to refunding 100% of the losses incurred by its affected customers.” Jan. 11, 2008 The Kahnawake Gaming Commission fines Absolute Poker $500,000 after the Gaming Associates audit found that seven accounts “were used to compromise AP’s systems by participating in live poker games with players using software that enabled the viewing of the ‘hole cards’ of each of the other players, resulting in un- fair play,”according to a KGC statement. On the same day,Absolute Poker responds to the fine by saying it is “pleased, after these many months, that Absolute Poker can finally put behind it a most distress- ing and regrettable experience for the company.” The statement adds that while “AP is paying a severe penalty for the fraud perpetrated upon the Company and its customers, we are gratified that we can now close the book on this sordid affair.” Jan. 12, 2008 UltimateBet is alerted to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” ex- hibited “abnormally high winning statis- tics” and was accused of having an unfair advantage during play. These allegations were made both directly to UltimateBet by concerned players and the KGC, and in- directly through several Web forums. March 6, 2008 Almost two months after being alerted to possible cheating, UltimateBet releases a statement saying it“immediately launched an extensive inquiry”following the allega- tions in January and the initial findings of the third-party review confirmed that “NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal”and that it has“expand- ed the investigation to look into whether an unfair advantage existed, how such a scheme might have been perpetrated, and whether additional accounts beyond those of NioNio were involved.” May 29, 2008 Tokwiro Enterprises confirms that em- ployees of UltimateBet had been cheating online poker players by gaining access to opponents’ hole cards for almost two years. While Tokwiro did release a list of account names, they did not identify the people behind the accounts. June 5, 2008 UltimateBet releases a statement on its Web site saying that it is “confident that we have uncovered the majority of the usernames involved in the fraud and pro- cessed the corresponding refunds. How- ever, we are currently analyzing data for additional usernames that appear to have suspicious activity.” It adds that it expects to have the investigation concluded by June 30. July 25, 2008 Tokwiro Enterprises announces that it has concluded the investigation and has iden- tified a total of 19 accounts and 88 associ- ated usernames that were involved in the cheating. The investigation also reveals that the perpetrators logged into the cli- ent software, using an account that had the ability to view hole cards.The ability of a specific account to view hole cards was enabled by illicit software that was placed on the UltimateBet servers prior to Octo- ber 2006, which was before Tokwiro ac- quired the business. The statement goes on to say that the investigation has been turned over to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) and its auditors.