Last year, Absolute Poker was accused and ultimately found guilty of insider cheating by unnamed executives of the company. They were fined and forced to clean house.
There were many unanswered questions surrounding the Absolute poker scandal as far as who was fingered as the cheater and who was actually fired over the incident.
I have alleged all along that although Joe Norton claims his company (Tokwiro) owns Absolute and Ultimatebet, his ownership is merely a front for the true owners... Scott Tom and his family along with the other investors who originally founded Absolute Poker. Cornell Figi claims to have proof of this in his posts on 2 pls 2.
The super user account used at Absolute was directly linked to Scott Tom's home address and the super user account was apparently registered in Scott Tom's wife's name.
Now, Ultimatebet, sister site to Absolute has admitted that their system was compromised by a super user who was involved with the previous owners of the company. What a mess! It appears that the owners (whoever they really are) of these companies are doing everything possible to destroy themselves and the industry itself.
For those who are unaware of the scandals or the Joe Norton connection to all this, here's a brief history:
Scott Tom and his frat buddies, with financial backing from the Tom and Tatum families, founded Absolute Poker.
Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet are licensed by the Kahnewake Gaming Commission (KGC) and their servers are housed on the Mohawk Internet Technologies (MIT) servers.
KGC and MIT are operated the Mohawks and located on the Kahnewake Reserve, just outside of Montreal in Quebec Canada.
Joe Norton, Grand Chief of the Mohawk Tribe, helped set up KGC and MIT.
Joe Norton retired as chief and eventually claimed ownership of Absolute and Ultimatebet.
Does all this sound like a conflict of interest?
I have to wonder how the licensing body, auditors, security team, management and owners of Ultimatebet all failed to consider that Ultimatebet could be compromised based on what happened at Absolute a few months prior. Yet, no one bothered to check out their systems for similar vulnerabilities. It took the same team of players that broke the Absolute scandal to force Ultimatebet to admit they had a super user in their midst.
Once again, I salute the guys at 2 plus 2 for discovering the abnormal play and for having the persistence to force Ultimatebet to finally come clean (sort of).
I have to give thanks and appreciation to Cornell Figi on 2 plus 2 for taking so much time gathering the pertinent information and producing a coherent package for us all to use and refer to.
Links will be provided at the end of this article.
So we have two companies owned by the same people that are both found guilty of allowing insiders (executives and owners?) to gain access to super user accounts which allow the user to view the opponents hole cards during game play.
We have millions of dollars cheated from high stakes players.
We have denial after denial until they are forced to admit the truth (or their version of it).
We have part truths and cover ups, lack of disclosure and a likely conflict of interest.
We have two rooms caught cheating and lying. Yet, these two rooms are still operating under license of the KGC.
People continue playing at AP and UB
Both Absolute Poker and Ultimatebet continue to thrive. Players continue to trust them with their money. Neither room has suffered a serious decline in traffic. SCARY!!!!
Come on people, wake up!
There are many poker sites that accept American players where you don't need to fear for your financial security. There's no excuse for patronizing these two sites.
At least take the time to read the threads and blogs I have linked here. Make an informed decision. And don't say I didn't warn you!
These are a few excerpts (posted by Cornell Figi) from the current discussion at 2plus2....
This statement is a key to the deception involved in this press release. Just because Tokwiro is the sole proprietor of UltimateBet you should not infer that Tokwiro is intimately involved in the company’s management.
Understanding who Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is and what Tokwiro does for UltimateBet is vital to understanding what occurred at Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet and how the cheating was allowed to occur. In order to recognize the depth of the deception in this press release one must first understand Tokwiro’s role in the ownership and management of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker. The following is just a brief preview of what is known about of these relationships, many pages of additional info including sources will be posted soon.
On paper Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG holds a 100% interest in both UltimateBet and Absolute Poker. Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is a shell corporation registered in the Kahnawake territory of Canada and owned by Chief Joe Norton. Joe Norton’s primary role in the company is to use his tribal connections to do things that would be illegal, impractical, or expensive anywhere outside of his reservation.
The ownership and management structure of AP/UB is intentionally designed to be practically indecipherable. The ‘real’ owners of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker do not want the company to be in their name for liability and tax reasons. They also do not want anyone to be able to trace the company back to them for legal reasons. However, they have not been able to completely cover their tracks.
Chief Joe Norton subcontracts the management of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker to a privately owned Maltese company called Blast Off Ltd. (in the past other companies have played the role that Blast Off Ltd. is currently filling, the names of the companies have changed but the relationship and ownership have not. The constantly changing companies add an additional wrinkle in figuring out the ‘real’ owners of the company).
Blast Off Ltd. is a shell company which owns other shell companies which in turn own other shell companies and the final link in the chain is the company that is subcontracted to manage the poker sites.
Many of the people who are ‘hired’ by that subsidiary to manage the poker sites are the original investors in the companies. Their ‘employment contract’ includes an incentive deal where they are paid the vast majority of UB/AP’s profits every year for the next 20 years. They are making the same money that they once made as founder and owner of the companies before they decided to go under ground but they have absolved themselves of the risk because they are now just employees. Among other people, Scott Tom (founder of AP and operator of the Potripper and other AP cheating accounts) is a ‘consultant’ who still receives a significant percentage of UB/AP’s annual profits.
Calling the KGC a regulatory body is completely dishonest.
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission was created in 1996 by Chief Joe Norton. The KGC was created so that online gambling sites could put the KGC logo on their webpage and claim to be independently regulated.
I am not positing that every gaming site that boasts the KGC logo (below) on their website is cheating its players. However, there is irrefutable evidence that any employee, owner, or operator of a gaming site licensed by the KGC has the ability to cheat is players without fear of interference or detection from their regulatory authority. If you gamble on a website licensed by the KGC you should know that there is no outside authority protecting you from an unfair game. Gambling on a website licensed by the KGC is a gamble in itself.
The investigation has concluded that certain player accounts did in fact have an unfair advantage, and that these accounts targeted the highest limit games on the site.[9] The individuals responsible were found to have worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.
There is lot of substance in this sentence
An honest way to rewrite this sentence is: The cheating was perpetrated by the ‘real’ owners of UltimateBet and their very close associates who hold upper management positions. The cheaters continue to be paid their dividends and they may or may not still be intimately involved in the management of the company.
This sentence from the press release really is a stroke of genius; it might be the most misleading yet technically true sentence that I have ever read. In order to fully understand how misleading this sentence is, please see note [3] about the ownership and management structure of UltimateBet.
This sentence is also very curious in that there is no documented evidence that Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG purchased UltimateBet in October 2006. UltimateBet nor Tokwiro issued a press release, there were no newspaper articles on the acquisition, there was not a single blog reporting the acquisition, and UltimateBet did not post anything on their website about the acquisition. To the best of my knowledge Tokwiro was not mentioned a single time on UltimateBet’s website until it was added in an attempt to distance themselves from this scandal.
Assuming however that Tokwiro did purchase UltimateBet in October 2006 it would be true that the cheaters ‘worked for the previous ownership.’ What the press release doesn’t say is that the cheaters still work for the current ownership. What the press release also doesn’t say is that the cheaters are the real ownership of UltimateBet. What the press release should have said was “The owners of UltimateBet operated a superuser account for over twenty months allowing them access to their opponents hole cards and the ability to steal from the players”
Furthermore, that same ‘previous ownership’ referred to in this sentence is still in charge of all day to day functions of UltimateBet and the same previous ownership is still being paid dividends by UltimateBet for their management of the site.
The statement that: “The individuals responsible were found to have worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.” was worded like the problem was taken care of because previous ownership is out of the picture. Unfortunately, we know better.
Here is a little background information about the recent sales of UltimateBet which should explain more about the cheaters and their relationship to the company. I have tried to simplify things as much as possible in this outline, I will go into further detail later. There are hundreds to thousands of pages of source documents that I have uncovered that will be posted later.
In October 2006 the privately held, Malta based Blast Off Ltd. purchased a publicly traded company called Excapsa Software Inc. While all Excapsa did was own and operate online gaming sites the company owned several subsidiaries out of legal liability concerns. One of Excapsa’s subsidiaries owned UltimateBet.
In February 2006 Excapsa floated on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market. After the float Excapsa was a publicly traded company with a market value of ~$230m.
Blast Off Ltd. was owned by the principals of UltimateBet/Absolute Poker (Scott Tom et al) and those same people were at the helm of Excapsa (note: while this is all true this is also very well hidden as these people did not hold the titles of any of these companies).
In October 2006 these principles sold Excapsa to Blast Off Ltd. for $130m. Of the $130m sale price $10m was paid to the shareholders at the time of the sale and promissory notes were given for the remainder. There is no evidence that the total payment was ever made and there is also other money ‘missing.’ from what was reported about this sale. The missing money might amount to anywhere from $40m - $150m and it is very likely that the owners of Excapsa were guilty of investor fraud when they sold the company to themselves at a discounted rate, stole millions of dollars, and then (probably) defaulted on their promises for full payment. (note: I have good evidence that this is exactly what happened however I am yet to find the 155bb/100 smoking gun so I can not say with 100% certainty that Excapsa committed investor fraud when they sold to Blast Off.)
Links:
Current discussion on UB press release (2+2 Forums)
The main thread about Absolute's super user scandal (2+2 Forums)
AbsoluteDetectives Website
There are many other sources available. Most are referenced in the threads/articles I have provided links for. Nat Arem is another person who was intimately involved in the sleuthing of the Absolute evidence and his blog is definitely worth a look.
