Online poker cheating blamed on employee

‘He can see the cards’
“(He) can see the cards, and you can put my name on that,” said Roy Cooke, who was head of security at the pioneering poker site Planetpoker.com for six years.

“When people are doing things out of character and consistently doing it right, there’s a reason for it,” he said. “When they’re always playing the hand that has value in a situation and then folding a great hand when it has value, they can see the cards.”

Michael Shackleford, a former actuary with the Social Security Administration who now focuses on gambling at his Web site, wizardofodds.com, said it was highly unlikely that Potripper’s streak was simply attributable to good luck.

“It would be easier to buy a 6/49 lottery ticket in six different states, and hit the jackpot all six times," he said.

If the experts found the evidence overwhelming, Absolute Poker did not.

In its first statement on the allegations, the company said, “The result of our investigation is that we found no evidence that any of Absolute Poker’s redundant and varying levels of game client security were compromised. In other words, we have determined with reasonable certainty that it is impossible for any player or employee to see whole cards as was alleged. There is no part of the technology that allows for a “superuser” account, and there is no way for any person to influence the game software to their advantage.”

Who was the mysterious observer?
Ravitch, a blogger known as “Adanthar” in the online poker community, and Nat Arem, another player involved in posting the tournament re-creation, began fielding a flood of tips from insiders in the offshore Internet gambling industry and continued to press their case. With help from other players, they traced the IP address of a mysterious observer at Potripper’s table to Costa Rica and determined that the account was an internal Absolute Poker account developed during beta testing. They also cross-referenced an e-mail address used by the observer and found that it apparently belonged to Scott Tom, who they identified as either a past or current official at Absolute Poker.

It was only in this last detail that the amateur sleuths erred, according to the account emerging Friday.

Adam Small, an official with Pocketfives.com, a community of online tournament poker players, said that he spoke with officials of Absolute Poker on Thursday night and was told that the rogue employee had deliberately used information pointing to Tom.

“What they said on the phone was that it was not Scott Tom ... and that he has sort of framed Scott Tom,” he said.

The Absolute Poker spokesman did not confirm that the employee had attempted to frame Tom, but he said, “No management was involved, and Scott Tom … had no part in playing on any of these accounts.”

In a statement earlier this week, Absolute Poker said Tom “has not been involved with Absolute Poker for over a year and to the best of our knowledge, information and belief has not had access to any of Absolute Poker’s systems, databases or information.”

Site owned by Canadian Mohawks
Absolute Poker  states on its Web site that it is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises Enrg., located in Kahnawake Mohawk territory nine miles south of Montreal, Quebec. Tokwiro is described as a Mohawk owned and controlled sole proprietorship. The site also is licensed and ostensibly regulated by the tribe’s Kahnawake Gaming Commission, though it is not clear what level of scrutiny the commission applies to its licensees.

Many poker players interviewed for this article expressed concern that the incident would be another “black eye” for online poker, which has surged in popularity in recent years despite attempts by the U.S. government and many states to prevent Americans from playing over the Internet.  Most indicated they would prefer that the sites were licensed and regulated by the United States, but said they consider most of the leading offshore sites to be fair and secure.

“I think that the reasons this got handled the way that it has, with a happy ending, is because the overwhelming majority of people in the industry … want things to be run in a fair and honest way,” said Small of Pocketfives.com. “…  There is a perception that a lot of people in the industry are thieves, but that’s not the case for the most part. When something like this happens, the rest of the people, as soon as they catch wind of it band together and look for ways to pool information and bring people down who have done harm to them.”

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