Gaming regulation company Kahnawake Gaming has issued its final report on the Ultimate Bet / Absolute Poker scandal that rocked the poker world just under two years ago.
The report, seen here in a .pdf format, implicates 1994 WSOP Main Event champion Russ Hamilton as the main culprit for the cheating scam. It notes how Tokwiro Enterprises, owner of Ultimate Bet, were fined $1.5 million, and how $22 million had been returned to cheated players.
To recap, the UB scandal involved a series of ‘super user’ accounts using hole card revealers. Players began getting suspicious when users such as ‘potripper’ correctly called a bluff with 8-high for his tournament life.
UB and Kahnawake were heavily criticised in the wake of the scandal, for keeping quiet and ignoring indicative hand histories of cheating players. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission has finally concluded that 23 accounts with 117 different usernames were utilised in the cheating and transferring of money. Hole-cam revealing software was reportedly loaded on UB servers before November 2005.
Although the Commission has noted that 31 individuals are responsible for the cheating, only Russ Hamilton has been named and shamed. The report states how, ‘the Commission has provided extensive information to law enforcement authorities, including the names of 31 individuals who were associated, to varying degrees, with Russell Hamilton, the cheating accounts and/or transactions related to the cheating accounts’.
You can check out the full dossier here. Here is a clip summarising the UB scandal investigation: