Evidence has lingered on popular poker forums for many months which suggested and proved beyond any reasonable doubt that insider cheating had occurred at online poker site Ultimate Bet. Today the owners of Ultimate Bet issued a long overdue and heavily anticipated press release which admitted cheating had occurred and explained how it had been perpetrated. While this press release has only been out for an hour or so; many players who have followed this story closely have already spoken out to question potential inconstancies with this story.

In summary the company’s press release explains the situation as follows:

January 2008: Ultimate Bet was notified of suspicious play regarding an account with the user name “NioNio”. Within 24 hours they contacted their regulatory branch, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC), and temporarily suspended the NioNio account pending investigation.

February 2008: it was concluded the play of “NioNio was highly suspicious and a third party auditor “Gaming Associates” was called in to assist with the investigation. It was determined during this same month that a group of players received access to players hole cards using a security leak in the system and the players with access to this were former employees of Ultimate Bet prior to companies ownership change in October 2006.

May 2008: It was confirmed that fraudulent activity took place during March 7, 2006 to December 3, 2007, by six individuals using the following user names: NioNio, Sleepless, NoPaddles, nvtease, flatbroke33, ilike2win, UtakeIt2, FlipFlop2, erick456, WhackMe44, RockStarLA, stoned2nite, monizzle, FireNTexas, HeadKase01, LetsPatttty, NYMobser, and WhoWhereWhen

Current week: Gaming Associates certifies that the software code that enabled unfair play was removed from UltimateBet servers in February of 2008. Customers affected by this incident are identified, and plans for corrective action are reviewed with the KGC.

We emailed Poker-Prop.net founder Jim Griffin who provided us the following quote:

“I’m glad their company has at least done the right thing and returned players funds. I still don’t trust them. They proved with the way they handled the Absolute Poker situation they’ll lie and say anything they think players might believe, I’ve seen nothing that suggests they have an ounce of integrity and you can quote me on that”

Jim was likely referring to the fact that Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker cheating scandals appeared identical and both of these online poker rooms are owned by the same company. The coincidence comes in that both cheating scandals occurred exactly the same way and at the same time, however the press release passed blame onto the previous owners of Ultimate Bet, who obviously where not the ones who participated had stolen from players on Absolute Poker.

A member on the 2+2 forums chimed in with, “what a perfect press release, they use the words unfair advantage many times but never said cheating. I would hardly consider something as serious as seeing all opponents hole cards just an unfair advantage”.

At this time its obvious the poker community is unlikely ready to forgive Ultimate Bet or Absolute Poker, and probably rightfully so, but some peace can be found in the fact players funds have now been returned.

If you’re not familiar with this cheating scandal you can read a detailed summary here.