Kahnawake Gaming Commission and UB/Absolute Poker

[threescatters]

Editor's Note: this thread was split from this one:
http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...-1-2-3-a-3.htm

Not sure I follow, can you elaborate?

Well they are one of the most corrupt and joke regulators in our industry imo. You only have to look at the AP/UB scandals to see that they dont care and they look after their own, even if their own are stealing tens of millions from the players. I am sure you dont need me to elaborate on that but if you do then I will.

They have been recently trying to pretend to be on the players side by doing what they so proudly were shouting at this ICE thing (the report about them resolving 80% of players complaints in the players favour). I just find this lol given their history. People like them and AP/UB are exactly why legit casinos get a bad name and cant get regulated in places like the USA, we need their sort out of the industry for good.

[jetset]

I have been watching the KGC closely for the past two and some years because I was a strong critic of their performance as one of the biggest regulators in the industry.

I was initially sceptical that they could change their unresponsive ways and become a more player-friendly and effective jurisdiction, but I have to say I agree with Max's assessment that there has been a substantial improvement in both commitment and action, with the present board actively involved, responsive and clearly determined to maintain a revitalised fair and efficient regulatory structure.

These guys are serious, and a growing number of their licensees are on board, recognising the need for real regulation in a changing industry.

I think if you travelled to industry events and interacted with them on their stand (they're quite prepared to have a conversation with anyone who stops by) it would perhaps help you in better assessing their approach.

As far as I can see, there is no smoke and mirrors about their dispute stats - those are hard figures and represent a commitment to fairness not just by the KGC, but by the licensees who have to accept the decisions of the dispute mediator - who btw is a highly respected formed operator who ran one of the best online casinos groups in the business at one time.

As to the AP/UB issue; they were slow off the blocks initially, but if you follow the issue's history they eventually got it right and not only secured payments amounting to tens of millions of dollars, but also levied very heavy fines on the offending operator.

I guess it is inevitable for critics to remain convinced that an entity is incapable of change and is perpetrating some huge sort of con job, but in this case...and in my opinion based on both observation and interaction ... the KGC has made serious and honest changes to the benefit of the industry and the player, and is proving its intent by its actions.

I hope that they continue to do so, because that is a very positive development for us all.

[maxd]

Well they are one of the most corrupt and joke regulators in our industry imo. You only have to look at the AP/UB scandals to see that they dont care ....

I respectfully suggest you need to clean your classes and take another look. For the last few years there has been a new management team in place and they've made HUGE steps toward changing a lot of that history you speak of. The bottom line AFAIC is that you're talking about the old Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) -- and what you've said was perfectly appropriate for things back then -- not the new KGC which is a whole different story.

Trust me, there were no bigger sceptic about this KGC make-over than I, but the fact is that they're doing great things and have been for a couple years now. It may be hard to accept that things have changed, I totally understand that, but change they have. If you don't believe me then file a PAB on any KGC licensed property and I guarantee you that your case will be handled swiftly, fairly and professionally. Go on, do it now! All you've got to lose is your preconceptions.

Here's a fact: over the past two years KGC casinos have produced the lowest number of PABs per casino of any licensing body. And they've got the best complaints response team of anyone in the business should I have a PAB issue that I need to take to them. That's no coincidence! As we've said elsewhere, quality service like this doesn't happen by accident.

As to the AP/UB situation we have data that shows that over 700 non-US cases were resolved by them this past year, most of them player payouts. There are about 300 US cases in the works. If you want more detail I can probably get it but the accusation that they are doing nothing is simply unfounded and unfair.

In fact I'll go so far as to say this: failing to recognize the changes the KGC has made and the quality of service they now offer actually encourages other licensing agents to carry on with business as usual, however bad that may be. Try taking a complaint to Cyprus or Malta or the Netherlands Antilles licensing people. Then you'll learn what crappy, dead-end service really is. If the efforts the KGC people have gone to mean nothing then what incentive is there for the other guys to ever change? None, and they won't, because they don't have to.

At the KGC you've got a highly capable and dedicated Complaints Officer who has handled a few thousand cases in the past couple years since she came on board and the majority of those resulted in full resolutions with the player. You've also got a management team fully committed to turning things around and supporting that Complaints Officer.

If I was in trouble with a casino today I'd hope it was KGC licensed because if it was I'd have very good reason to believe that I'd get a fair and speedy resolution.

[threescatters]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replys, sorry if I offended anyone with my comments or derailed the thread.

I'll reply later, it will be a detailed reply where I cite some sources etc as I feel I need to show my point somehow

Taken everything thats been said on board tho.


threescatters.

[threescatters]

Hi Guys,

Well I guess I sparked a debate, one in which I am in a minority in. I hope to at least show here why I believe what I wrote before, and that they did not do everything claimed of them.

Ok so reading above it seems there has been a change of personnel and attitude at the KGC. The change of personnel I had no idea about before I read this morning I will be honest. We will start with the old KGC, which it seems we are vastly in agreement about having been awful. However I will have to disagree with the following.

As to the AP/UB issue; they were slow off the blocks initially, but if you follow the issue's history they eventually got it right and not only secured payments amounting to tens of millions of dollars, but also levied very heavy fines on the offending operator.

Being a poker player I have followed this issue extremely closely since I had an argument with UB security team in 2005 when I used to play there.

Let us start with this thread here, which compiles everything into a nice summary

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...-stolen-99247/

A key point from early on in the first post of that thread

"Ultimate Bet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, a privately owned company that also owns and operates Absolute Poker.

Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is run by Joe Norton, the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are overseen and licensed by the “independent” Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is a regulatory arm of the Mowhawk Indian tribe in Canada"

As you can see through Joe Norton the Kahnawake gaming commission and UB/AP are linked anyway from the start. Not exactly an independant and fair regulator for starters.

Next up Jetset you said they were "slow off the blocks initially".

If you read the link above, you will see AP/UB absolutely flat out denied any wrongdoing despite overwhelming and absolutely undeniable evidence of the cheating going on. Despite this evidence the KGC did nothing when pressed either, backing the sites all the way. Funny that because when the "break" came and the hand history was accidently sent out by AP itself they found this about the suspicious account looking at the players hole cards.

"The e-mail address and IP address linked to #363 was the same as that of another observer using the e-mail address scott@rivieraltd.com, the owner of which was allegedly Absolute Poker co-founder Scott Tom.

Further investigations revealed that rivieraltd.com’s mail server IP (66.212.244.147) was allocated to Absolute Entertainment SA at Mohawk Internet Technologies data center (po12.dr4.kdca.mohawk.ca. Two hours after this discovery was posted on twoplustwo the DNS information at rivieraltd.com had been deleted. Tracks were being covered.

Mohawk.ca should also sound familiar to those of you paying attention so far. To refresh your memory:

Quote:
Ultimate Bet is owned by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG , a privately owned company that also owns and operates Absolute Poker .
Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG is run by Joe Norton, the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is the regulatory arm of the Mohawk Indian tribe in Canada.

The superuser account that cheated and stole money on Absolute Poker was being operated by Absolute Poker's founder and it also had direct ties to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and Ultimate Bet. It was no wonder why Absolute Poker tried to cover up the cheating.
"

When they were eventually forced to admit to the cheating thanks to the overwhelming evidence the following things happened.

1) The KGC only released superuser names that the players had found themselves, long after the fact. They did absolutely nothing to further the investigation

2) They named Russ Hamilton as the perpetrator but refused to name the other superusers (these are starting to come out now). They claimed legal action was taken on all those guilty but when pressed refused to name exactly what who or how.

3) The refunds were hugely inadequate. Tournament players were not refunded (many superuser accounts won seats to aruba for one), Closed accounts were not refunded, Accounts on skins such as the hugely popular pokershare were not refunded, Fixed Limit players were not refunded properly, Rich players would not notice the difference were not refunded - specifically Ben Affleck was one of these. Hand historys were promised but not provided, almost certainly because these refunds were inadequate and there was the 2nd type of cheating going on that they did not want outed. They paid back far less than the minimum acceptable, taking everything they thought they could get away with.

4) They promised at the time that there was a complete change of management going forward and no former owners were involved. We now know this to be a complete lie from the black friday indictments (Scott Tom).

5) As already mentioned they promised full hand historys to everyone affected. Given all the issues I have talked about above it will come as no surprise that this was a lie and they never made good on this promise.

these issues were investigated by Haley Hintz here http://haleyspokerblog.blogspot.com/ (read the "just conjuncturin" posts) as well as a lot more in depth on the coverup/ownership of the site.

Sorry for the long winded start of the post but I hope you can see jetset the KGC never has from then until now "got it right". If they got it right then

1) The guilty parties would all have been named, this has never happened
2) Everybody who was cheated would have received a FULL refund, this has nowhere near happened.
2) Complete hand histories would have been provided for everyone, to check the refund process was done correctly , this has never happened
3) All former owners and those involved in the cheating would have been removed from ownership/management. Not only was this not done but it was actively lied about right up until black friday.

If you disagree about any of this I invite you to read Haleys blog that I have linked and forthcoming book on the subject. I think most of us are in agreement that the "old" KGC were bad however, so onto the new.

First of all about the "new" KGC I have no idea when this change in personnel happened so I am not sure what time period to start from. I will just go with the most recent and most obvious.

As already stated the KGC right up until black friday claimed no former owners/management were involved with Cereus. This was proven a lie in the black friday indictments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_..._v._Scheinberg when Scott Tom was named. How can a safe operator lie about (or allow the places it is regulating to openly lie) who is running/owning them? I thought it was a requirement of all major regulators that nobody with a criminal background gets a gaming licence? Scott Tom was proven (by the players, NOT the KGC) to be the absolute poker cheat just a few years previous.

Even if they did not know that then this is a regulator that allowed the sites to steal from player funds

http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/06/...as-only-5m-6m/

We see here that cereus was allowed by the KGC to have a near 50 million shortfall from what it owed to what cash it had on hand. It is no wonder nobody is getting paid out from cereus. This situation was clearly under the "new" khanawake gaming comissions control. They can force some online casinos to pay out in 80% of disputes but the reality is they let the sites take any liberties they want with your money. I cannot see how this is a regulator thats turned a new leaf? Nobody was regulating them and they were clearly doing whatever they wanted with player money.

My apologies that this post is not quite all I hoped it would be (I am tired!) but thanks for reading. I have taken everything thats been said on board. I just cannot comprehend how any regulator worth their salt lets a big poker site have 55 million in player accounts but only 5 million cash. Coupled with the lying about the owners and past history I still feel this is a regulator giving the industry a bad name.

I should also so I believe in 2nd chances and that people/companies can turn over a new leaf. We all learn from mistakes. However if you are turning over a new leaf you should also deal with what you did wrong in the past. I think it is policy here that old legitimate PAB's have to be dealt with if a casino is going to be accreditted again? Thats a great rule. Unfortunately the KGC has never made good on the past of UB/AP

One last thing I forgot to mention is that for the last few months Cereus has not paid ANYONE (even the occasional 250s have stopped)

Yet you can still log in and deposit and play. Your money going into a black void.

What legitimate regulator would allow this? Surely their licence should have been revoked? They are bankrupt, not paying players and not speaking to anyone yet KGC will still allow you to deposit there?

Alderney for all their failings pulled the plug on FTP when it was clear they were bankrupt to stop any unsuspecting players depositing in there.

Clearly, proper regulation of AP/UB is not a concern of the current KGC.

[maxd]

Thank you for the detailed post. It certainly sounds like there are some issues here that need looking into. Unfortunately I am still trying to dig myself out from under a PAB backlog and just don't have the time to pursue those issues at this time. That said it is, as you may have guessed, a subject of particular interest to me and I hope to get back to this soon. Until then ... threescatters has suggested that this KGC derail needs to be split off into its own thread and I agree. That too will have to wait a bit but yes, I think a thread split is in order.

[jetset]

I don't think there is any difference of opinion on the past history of the KGC, which seems to be the main thrust and content of your post, threescatters - there were a number of things they could have done a lot better in the AB/UB scandal, and that is pretty much common cause here.

That said, imo we should not be blinded by the past to the positives of the present and future, or decry the punitive measures that the KGC eventually took; the remedial measures they embarked on after expert advice following the debacle; the aid they have rendered players since; or of the possibility that they may have been kept in the dark on some elements by the operator - look to Alderney for a similar sort of embarrassment, audits notwithstanding.

Nor should that incident detract from the solid work that the KGC has done more recently in fixing its flaws, introducing a player dispute system that works well, improving communication with the player community and tightening up on both operator conduct and problem gambling exclusion systems.

Not too many regulators are performing to the same level in those spheres, as Max has commented.

I think there is also a danger here of bludgeoning the regulator with the sins of the real culprits in the UB/AB scandal. They may have been dilatory, but they were not the people screwing the players, and they've made a substantial contribution in sorting out the mess to the benefit of players since.

Years ago I was asking the same questions (as opposed to making firm assertions) posed in this thread regarding the relationship and influence of Joe Norton and Tokwiro Enterprises vis-a-vis the KGC, and how the deal that enabled Tokwiro to acquire its lucrative if crooked poker assets was financially structured. I was, and I guess I still am, still frustrated with the paucity of proven evidence that has so far been disclosed.

In the nature of things, the full nefarious detail will probably emerge at some point, but in the meantime I am more concerned with the present and what the KGC is doing in the here and now to make the players' lot safer and the industry a more respected space.

I, too have read Haley Hintz and other sources extensively in a bid to definitively discover who was really behind the UB/AB scenes; and like many others I ranted against the failure of all involved to name and shame the crooks who prejudiced so many players - I always thought that the rationale that the police were investigating the issue and that the names had been passed to them was more than a little lame, particularly when nothing seemed to come of it.

I think your post does highlight some valid questions related to more recent times, such as the current interaction between Cereus, the KGC and the DoJ on the reportedly large sums of money seized in the Black Friday action; the consequences of that and its impact on Cereus; the success (or not - depending on your perception) of the KGC in getting hundreds of players paid, with more in the pipeline; and the pros and cons of revoking or suspending a licence or hanging in there in order to maintain leverage over the poker operator concerned and get payments made.

However, it is not my job or desire to defend the KGC, nor have I the time or information available so to do, so I will conclude here by reiterating that I believe from my own experiences already detailed in this thread that the KGC has made significant and concrete improvements and appears intent on maintaining the momentum

In my opinion the folks behind that significant change of approach to regulation deserve acknowledgement, having lifted their standards of player care above less-attentive jurisdictions out there.

I stand on that.

[jetset]

Thank you for the detailed post. It certainly sounds like there are some issues here that need looking into. Unfortunately I am still trying to dig myself out from under a PAB backlog and just don't have the time to pursue those issues at this time. That said it is, as you may have guessed, a subject of particular interest to me and I hope to get back to this soon. Until then ... threescatters has suggested that this KGC derail needs to be split off into its own thread and I agree. That too will have to wait a bit but yes, I think a thread split is in order.

I agree.

[threescatters]

Wow great post jetset, cant argue with that, my hat is off.

[maxd]

Wow great post jetset, cant argue with that, my hat is off.

+1