In a document published by the Washington Post entitled “Tokwiro Enterprises Responds to Investigation,” Paul Leggett, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, submitted comments to representatives of the newspaper. On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired a feature about the online poker scandals that rocked Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, both Tokwiro-owned rooms, in conjunction with the Washington periodical.
The statement begins by noting that Joe Norton is the “sole proprietor” of Tokwiro. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft pointed out that Norton was also a former Grand Chief of the Kahnawake tribe, the same group that provides licenses to several of the world’s largest online poker rooms. Even the current Kahnawake Chief, Michael Delisle, told the Post that he was surprised to hear that Norton owned Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker.
The person responsible for the Absolute Poker scandal was not publicly named by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC). However, the statement by Leggett claims, “Tokwiro, on conclusion of the investigation, immediately fired the cheater, who had been a consultant to the company.” Then, “Mr. Norton then installed a completely new management team.”
Many players were outraged that the person behind the Absolute Poker incident was not prosecuted. 60 Minutes pointed this out as well, saying that Tokwiro had instead cut a deal with the cheater. The statement by the COO of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet read, “In return for agreeing not to prosecute the cheater, Tokwiro received a full account of exactly how the cheating was conducted. Tokwiro made this agreement so that it could repair the security hole immediately and begin to reimburse players.” The refunds to its customers amounted to $1.6 million. In the scandal on Ultimate Bet, the amount stolen from players was well over 10 times that number.
The cheating on Ultimate Bet, which was masterminded by former affiliate manager Russ Hamilton, began in 2004, two years before Tokwiro purchased the site. Hamilton won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1994 and, according to the statement by Tokwiro, was not employed by the company after it purchased Ultimate Bet. However, “For a brief time in 2007, Mr. Hamilton had a relationship with Tokwiro whereby he would refer players from his corporate website to Ultimate Bet; but he was not an employee and had no responsibilities at Ultimate Bet.”
Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker merged one week ago to form the CEREUS poker network. According to traffic site PokerScout, CEREUS currently ranks as the seventh largest in terms of the number of cash game players. Over the last seven days, it has averaged 2,150 ring game customers. At the time of writing at 12:00 Noon Eastern Time on Monday, there are 1,585 cash game players on the felts of CEREUS. Of those, 980 are engaged in No Limit Texas Hold’em. The largest poker site in the world according to Poker Scout is PokerStars, which has a seven day average of 19,200 cash game players. The second largest site is Full Tilt Poker, with 8,200.
Leggett rounded out his comments to 60 Minutes by stating, “Our consciences rest easy because we have done the right thing in every instance; we vigorously investigated allegations of cheating, cooperated fully with our regulatory body, voluntarily reimbursed millions of dollars to affected players out of our own pockets, and established cutting-edge security systems that now make us the safest in the industry.”
In the Post article, Frank Catania, who has led an independent investigation on behalf of the KGC, stated that he “expects UltimateBet to lose its license or be sold” as a result of having to pay back more than $20 million to players. However, Tokwiro recently won a $15 million judgment against UB’s former owners, Excapsa, for this purpose.
