Jen, you know more about Absolute than I do, so maybe you already know … but I wasn’t aware that Scott Tom’s dad (what’s his first name? he won a 2008 bracelet, I know that much) may or may not be under indictment.
Am also curious why any indictment in this case would be sealed.
Some might say that I’ve been a raving lunatic somewhat vocal about my frustrations with the AP and UB scandals. This is true, and thus I attempted to contact UltimateBet once again in July for answers to some of my questions. To my surprise, I was contacted by the Vice President of PR at Tokwiro Enterprises, UB’s parent company, who said she would respond to my inquiries. After two weeks of no such thing, I was on the verge of writing another rant/post here sending a polite follow-up when I received an e-mail asking if I’d like to speak with the Chief Operating Officer of Tokwiro, Paul Leggett. Ummm, yes, please.
I conducted the interview on Friday, Aug. 8, via telephone, and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised at Mr. Leggett’s willingness to answer my questions as he was able and be as honest as the corporate attorneys would allow. He has been reaching out to other media outlets lately, having done guest appearances on 2+2 and Pocket 5 podcasts, and I was happy to finally have a door opened and someone coming out to answer questions.
The full interview has been submitted to PokerWorks in a three-part series due to the length of the transcribed interview. The first article is up now, and the others will be posted in subsequent days.
Highlights of the interview included dispelling myths and rumors, speaking of the utmost confidence that the perpetrator(s) will be caught and prosecuted, and giving details about new security procedures and systems to prevent future improprieties.
A few excerpts:
In response to a question about how two companies, AP and UB, could be purchased without any knowledge of cheating going on at the highest levels:
“There definitely was due diligence done at the time of purchase… but this is a very large platform that we purchased. Unfortunately, during this due diligence process, we simply did not discover the code that was put on there…”
The UltimateBet Superuser scandal has taken a giant leap into the depths of criminal behavior. If anyone thought the May 29th statement was the end of it, sorry to burst your faith in integrity and good, um, faith.
Nat Arem, the rogue investigator who blew the top off the Absolute Poker scandal, has stepped in to assist with the UB investigation that never seems to end. And the most recent post on his blog, dated today, links some of the superuser accounts on UB to one of the site’s former owners, Russ Hamilton. Yep, that’s 1994 WSOP main event champion, Russ Hamilton. Supposedly, he no longer has a stake in the company, but there are conflicting reports as to his current involvement in UB business.
Here’s a brief excerpt from Arem’s blog:
But it showed that the registered address of at least some of the super user accounts belonged to Russ Hamilton, the former owner of UB.
I basically felt sick to my stomach. I talked to Russ on the phone a few times in the fall — brsavage got me in touch with him. We talked about how disgusting it was that this happened at AP. Russ expressed a strong opinion that he was going to do whatever it took to get things right and, at the time, I believed him that he was going to fight to get things at AP right. He even got me in touch with the guys at AP so I could go down there and meet with them on behalf of PokerNews and the community as a whole. This guy RAILED against the people at AP who were superusing.
Eric “Rizen” Lynch announced yesterday on his blog that he is no longer associated with the UltimateBet brand.
He chose not to release any details:
After a lot of reflection and thought, I have decided to separate myself from the Ultimate Bet brand. I hope that everyone will respect my privacy, as I wish to not go into the decision in any great detail at this time. At this point in time I just believe that the things I’m trying to accomplish in my career are not in sync with the Ultimate Bet brand.
There are many interesting levels to this. Eric chose to sign on with UB as the online poker site just barely came clean about its superuser cheating scandal, and it came just after Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy signed a deal with UB. Evidently, Eric took a lot of crap from the forums for his decision, and whether that had anything to do with his withdrawal from the sponsorship remains to be told. But whatever made him end the deal must have been of a significant nature because he did it even before the main event of the WSOP.
Oh, and for those who thought the UB statement concluded the superuser scandal, it is by no means concluded. UB was careful to send out their statement of resolution the day before the WSOP began this summer, but what was not widely reported was another statement posted on the website less than a week later. It quietly notes that their oh-so-thorough investigation that took many months was not so thorough and numerous accounts involved in the scandal may have been missed.
Click below for the hush-hush sweep-it-under-the-rug release:
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