INCRIMINATING FILE SENT IN ERROR FROM ABSOLUTE POKER? (Update)

26 October 2007

Police and commercial investigations in prospect


The Absolute Poker scandal continued to dominate the online poker message boards and spilled over into the mainstream media again during the week.

As the Absolute Poker scandal trundled into the weekend, dubbed "Pokergate" by some observers, more detail emerged on the delivery of information which enabled an incensed player community to adduce sufficient evidence that something was terribly, and fraudulently wrong with an online poker tournament held by the online poker website (see previous InfoPowa reports)

Absolute distributed the following message widely to its player base:

"Dear valued player,

"Absolute Poker has identified an internal security breach that compromised our systems for a limited period of time. The cause of the breach has been determined and completely resolved. In addition, all necessary resources, both internal and external, have been engaged to ensure this does not happen again. Our investigation is not fully concluded, and we wish to thank the extended poker community for any and all assistance related to the matter.

"Game integrity has always and continues to be of the utmost importance at Absolute Poker. The Management of Absolute Poker is appalled by these findings, and is committed to our players and to the integrity of our site and the online poker industry.

"All players affected by the security breach will be identified during the audit process that has been initiated and all funds, including interest, will be returned. Absolute Poker would like to apologize for the recent events and is committed to diligently working with outside security firms, auditing firms, the extended poker community and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission to ensure the situation is entirely resolved.

"A comprehensive statement will be forthcoming shortly providing more details of the situation."

Players expressed doubts and even disbelief regarding the claimed lack of involvement of Scott Tomm by the company in press reports after the strong indications and evidence contained in a highly detailed xls file apparently mistakenly sent to a player by an Absolute staffer.

Asking for further information on the file, which lies at the heart of the massive expose by poker players in the Absolute Poker affair, gambling information portal 911 was told that an employee responsible for sending out the "smoking gun" spread sheet with confidential client information (and the server info of the suspect players leading to Absolute's own server) did so out of "laziness".

"Instead of looking up specific information that had been requested, he could not find this information and simply shot the whole spread sheet to a customer," 911 was informed by an unidentified executive at Absolute Poker, which advertises on the portal.

The executive added that the unnamed employee was terminated and Absolute Poker is working to ensure that such an instance never happens again....and significantly told the reporter that information launched to the customer "could potentially have been changed, according to management", though this is something that cannot be ascertained at this juncture.

"Scott Tomm had no involvement in this matter," the representative said, answering questions about the allegedly former Absolute executive.

Players were also sceptical of the general nature of the Absolute Poker statement regarding an involvement in the investigations, pointing out that no firm arrangement had so far been proposed, and that there were still several key unanswered questions, among them the company's earlier statements totally denying there was a problem and subsequently on chip dumping.

But players were better pleased by the firm's inclusion of an assurance that financial adjustments would be made: "All players affected by the security breach will be identified during the audit process that has been initiated and all funds, including interest, will be returned."

The Absolute Poker debacle continues to make the mainstream press headlines, carried by Associated Press, MSNBC and ABC:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3752500&page=1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21381022/

MSN.com had its own experts take a look at the controversial tournament information recreated in a YouTube video by the player community, and asked an online gambling security expert to comment.

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

A second expert was the respected "Wizard of Odds" Michael Shackleford, a former actuary with the Social Security Administration who now has his own gambling information site. He 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 in the MSN.com article.

Initially Absolute Poker had denied that anything was wrong or that its system could have been breached.

Since then, however, the poker site's licensing body, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, has asked for an independent audit of the poker site. After that news broke on Thursday, the poker site began to change its approach.

Along with the statement from Absolute Poker to its customers, an anonymous employee came forward to talk to MSN.com about the situation. He told the news site that there had been a hacker - an employee trying to prove a point about the site who took it too far.

"This is literally a geek trying to prove to senior management that they were wrong, and he took it too far," the spokesperson told MSN.com.

He said the poker site acknowledges that there was a significant internal security breach whereby a resource who was "infinitely knowledgeable about the system" was able to get into the accounts in question, play on those accounts and see hole cards.

The security issue has been resolved and the company has identified serious internal communication issues that Absolute Poker is also working to resolve.

In summary - Absolute has confirmed that an employee compromised the integrity of the poker room by participating (and winning) poker tournaments while having the ability to review competing poker players face cards. A truly damning indictment.

AbsolutePoker is headquartered in a semi-autonomous Mohawk Indian territory outside of Montreal, Canada. Both the Quebec provincial police and officials at the Kahnawake Territory told ABCNEWS.com that they have launched investigations into the allegations.

Marco Johnson, 21, of Las Vegas was the player who started the community investigation rolling when he felt that he had been cheated in a tournament won by a player using the handle POTRIPPER. He was the one who received the detailed xls file that enabled an expert player community to unravel the alleged fraud.

"Basically, I took second place in a tournament, and there were just too many weird hands at the final table," Johnson told ABC NEWS.com. "My friends thought I got cheated and I e-mailed [AbsolutePoker] and asked for a hand history."

What he received instead was a document that included the hand histories of everyone involved in the tournament, their e-mail addresses and the IP address of their computers.

"It's so shady. Why would they send me this whole file? A regular hand history just shows the cards you had, but this was the master copy of a file in Excel. It showed 14 tables, every person at every table in the tournament. Instead of just seeing my cards, I could see everyone's," Johnson said.

"[Potripper] was cheating in the most obvious way. He was just a bad poker player and was playing very badly," said Serge Ravitch, a New York lawyer and professional poker player who moderates the Web site 2+2.com and was one of the first people Johnson trusted with the Excel file.

Johnson also shared the file with player and poker blogger Nat Arem, who looked past the hand histories to the IP address of the players.

The Excel document showed that at each table Potripper played, another user identified as #363 was present. Online players could not see him at the virtual table, but he apparently could seemingly see everyone's cards.

Potripper folded twice before #363 began watching, then did not fold once before the flop for nearly another half hour of play.

Arem traced the IP address of the observer back to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, the collection of servers in Canada at which AbsolutePoker was based.

Further sleuthing seems to link that IP address to a part-owner of the company, Scott Tom, and the Potripper account to a former director of operations at AbsolutePoker named AJ Ripper, Johnson said.

"It looks like the Potripper account is registered to AJ Ripper and Scott Tom's e-mail turned up. But I can't say for sure that someone else wasn't using his account, or it wasn't someone else sitting at his computer," Johnson said.

Neither Ripper nor Scott could be reached by ABC NEWS.com.

Ravitch estimated that AbsolutePoker 'stole' between $500 000 and $1 million over a two-week period. "We know approximately when it started, but we can't say for sure."

He said the online poker community "came together in an unprecedented way" to investigate the allegations because "those concerned could not let it go unchecked."

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which hosts Absolute Poker, subsequently said it had hired an independent investigator to audit the company.

"It is essential that all online gaming and wagering is conducted in a fair and honest manner where customers are protected. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is committed to ensuring fair and honest gaming," commission Chairman David Montour, said in a statement.

Quebec provincial police are also following the issue, and told ABC News they were looking into the matter but could not comment on a pending investigation.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa