Online poker room Ultimate Bet (UB) issued an official response to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission’s (KGC) 11-page report discussing their conclusions about the UB cheating scandal. The report, issued on Thursday, claimed former World Series of Poker Main Event winner Russ Hamilton and 31 co-conspirators used 117 screennames and 23 different Ultimate Bet accounts to cheat users on the site out of over $22 million from 2003-2007.
On Friday, Tokwiro Enterprises, the company who currently owns both Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, released their response to the report in which they highlighted some of the major points made by the KGC, especially those that expunged doubts that anyone from Tokwiro or currently affiliated with UB had anything to do with the cheating activity. Paul Leggett, the Chief Operating Officer for Tokwiro offered his thoughts on the KGC’s findings as part of the company’s official response:
“The welfare of our players is our top priority and we are very pleased they now have access to the details of the fraud and all the facts and findings released by the KGC included in their report,” he stated. “A lot of our players have been patiently awaiting the release of the full list of usernames involved in the cheating incidences, and we can now answer any of their outstanding inquiries related to their refunds.”
Tokwiro’s statement primarily reasserted previous claims from Tokwiro that they were unaware of the cheat code housed in the normal code of the UB poker client when they purchased the site from Excapsa Software in 2006. Excapsa and Tokwiro recently reached a legal settlement in which Excapsa paid the company $15 million to go towards reimbursing the players on the site who were affected by the cheating.
The KGC’s findings may have exonerated Tokwiro Enterprises from much of the scandal, but the company is still being required to implement several new measures per the KGC’s request in order to maintain their KGC-issued Client Provider Authorization (CPA). As part of the conditions, KGC is requiring Tokwiro to submit their game logs to independent consultants for review and seeking approval from the KGC before hiring any new managers or executives.
Tokwiro’s statement also disclosed that Ultimate Bet was taking steps of their own from within the company to ensure this does not happen again in the future. Implementation of a new ethics code, new rules about screen name changes, and a revamping of how VIP players are handled are just a few of the changes the company listed.
Tokwiro also commented on the list of screennames. The company stated that because the site used to have a very liberal screen name policy, it is possible that one or more of the screennames now belong to users who are in no way affiliated with the cheating scandal since the site used to allow discarded screennames to be picked up and used by other players.
Along with the official statement from the company, Ultimate Bet representative Kathryn Farrell offered the company’s thoughts on the end of this latest chapter in the scandal story. “With the public release of that decision, we are finally able to close the book on that chapter of the company’s history,” she wrote. “While we vow to never forget, we look to the future as a company with a passion for the game of poker and for providing our players with the safest and most secure poker rooms on the net.”
