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
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
(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
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
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.