UltimateBet confirms abnormal play...

This story has been ongoing since early January and up until now there has been very little "official" response from UB on the investigation. The following statement is quoted directly from GamingIntelligenceGroup.com.

Following complaints from players, UltimateBet has confirmed that it has found evidence of ‘abnormal’ playing activity at its online poker site.

UltimateBet and its licensing authority, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), were alerted on January 12th to allegations that a player with the online handle “NioNio” exhibited abnormally high winning statistics, resulting in accusations that the player had an unfair advantage during play.

The allegations also included reports of suspicious activity concerning the deletion of the NioNio account and other accounts that may have been related to the cheating.

UltimateBet says it immediately called in an independent third-party expert to review “hundreds of thousands of hand histories, all of which were promptly locked down and made available to the expert”.

The company went on to say: “The initial findings of our third-party expert confirm that the NioNio account’s winning statistics were indeed abnormal, and we have expanded 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.

“The investigation has proven to be extremely complex and, therefore, has been more extensive and taken much longer than initially expected. We continue to aggressively pursue the matter and will communicate the findings of our full investigation to our regulatory authority and to our customer base as soon as practicable.”

UltimateBet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises enrg. and headed by the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, Jo Norton. The company also owns AbsolutePoker.

Earlier this year the KGC fined AbsolutePoker $500,000 following an investigation into similar cheating allegations. In that case, the perpetrator(s) were found to have used a ‘backdoor’ in the poker software which enabled them to view other players ‘hole cards’.

The fact that Tokwiro Enterprises is again at the centre of cheating allegations will come as a significant blow to the company as well as the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, who’s investigation of AbsolutePoker was labelled a whitewash due to its lack of detail and limited financial penalty.

If these latest allegations are substantiated, the KGC will have little option but to impose a significant enough penalty to deter such activity in the future and to maintain its authority as a credible licensing jurisdiction.

Courtesy: Gaming Intelligence Group

Ottawa is considering taking on the KGC with US style regulations

The Canadian federal government announced on Tuesday they’re considering new measures to stamp out internet gaming sites based on the Kahnewake reserve located near Montreal Quebec. This move will certainly spark a major conflict between the First Nations and Ottawa.

The government has long considered the nearly 400 poker and casino sites operating there to be illegal but has failed to act. Neither the federal or provincial governments have ever attempted to enforce the law against the Kahnewake Gaming Commission.

Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, has asked his officials to look into “whether the enforcement of the criminal code provisions could be assisted with other measures”. The measures could include restricting banks and credit cards from conducting transactions with illegal operators. Sounds like they’ve taken a page from the US government’s playbook...

Here’s the rub...
The Kahnewake Mohawks claim to be a sovereign nation so Canadian laws don’t apply to them. They cite section 35 of Canada’s Constitution which protects native culture. They claim that gaming is central to their culture as a means of settling disputes through competition instead of violence. Other Canadian native groups have announced plans to emulate the Kahnewake.

Great Canadian Gaming Corp, and others in the billion dollar horse racing industry say they pay $1 billion in taxes each year and carry huge expenses. They claim the gambling sites hosted within the MIT (Mohawk Internet Technologies) servers are parasites and poachers. The track owners want the government to force ISP’s to block the sites from Canadian access.

According to Chuck Barnett of MIT, Ottawa is a foreign government. He says Ottawa has no business regulating activity on Mohawk territory. “If I were a Canadian, I might instead be more interested in how explicit legislation could serve as the catalyst for a potential source of economic development, employment and revenue through taxation,” He said.

Michael Lipton, a Toronto lawyer specializing in gaming law agrees with Barnett. He stated that the horse racing industry has a monopoly on gambling in Canada. “I guess if I had a monopoly, I wouldn’t want anyone to compete against me either”, he said.

Lipton pointed to the current situation in the US. “They are completely bogged down on how to block the system”

Lipton acknowledged there have been some problems with fraud. He was referring to the Absolute Poker scandal. The Kahnewake Gaming Commission fined Absolute $500,000 in that case. He claimed that was the exception, most sites are transparent and credible.

Lipton proposes the government would be better off bringing the Kahnewake sites into the system and regulating them. He thinks regulation would help protect against money laundering and protect the public. It would also bring in tax revenues and provide Canada with a competitive edge within the gaming industry. “I think Ottawa should embrace this and recognize that people don’t want to be in a position where the government tells them what they can or can’t do in the peace of their own home,” he said.

One thing is for certain...
Whenever the Canadian government and the First Nations have gone to war over serious issues, blood has been shed. The Kahnewake won’t just roll over for Ottawa on this, there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

I predict this will be a long and nasty fight.