ShareAs long as online poker has been around, the fear of hackers being able to compromise security systems remains a great fear for the industry. Fortunately, stories along those lines have been very few in the last 25 years but there have been some incidents that threatened to destroy confidence in the virtual game.
Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker Scandals
One such hack was the scandal surrounding Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Ultimate Bet was licensed in Canada by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in March 2001, and Absolute Poker followed in 2003, making up the Cereus Poker Network. Russ Hamilton, the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event winner, was a consultant for Ultimate Bet.The two sites had high-stakes cash games and offered various mixed games. The sites' name recognition was boosted by big-name ambassadors such as Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke. In 2007, players began to report suspicious activity on Absolute Poker, including high win rates and perfect play in every hand, suggesting that a super-user "God Mode" was being used.
The account "POTRIPPER" was identified as the main suspect and was linked to Absolute Poker's Director of Operations, AJ Green. An internal audit identified seven accounts that had cheated over a 40-day period, beginning in August 2007. The scandal left thousands of players cheated out of more than $1.6 million.
While PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker dominated the online poker market in the mid-2000s, plenty of volume was being put in on Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, which ran various mixed games and was one of the only sites that offered high-stakes cash games. These two sites also had name recognition, as a number of big-name ambassadors served as the faces of the two sites, including Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke.
In 2007, players began posting on Two Plus Two alleging that they had been cheated on Absolute Poker and reported suspicious behaviour by a number of accounts. That suspicious behaviour included phenomenally high win rates and seemingly perfect play in every spot.
POTRIPPER Accused
Most of the suspicion centred around the account "POTRIPPER," which took down a $100,000 guaranteed $1,000 buy-in tournament in September 2007 despite only having previously entered three low-stakes tournaments on the site. In the final hand against Marco "CrazyMarco" Johnson, "POTRIPPER" called an all-in bet with just ten high to win the tournament and a $30,000 prize.Other players came forward with suspicious hands that "POTRIPPER" had played throughout the tournament, and Johnson requested a hand history for the final table. Instead, Absolute Poker accidentally sent him a spreadsheet of actions at all tables from the first two hours of the tournament, which Johnson sent to other forum members.
PokerNews reported in October 2007: "The first 90-plus hands of POTRIPPER's tourney were included in the spreadsheet. As skilled poker players sorted and decoded the history of the hands, another pattern of consistently unusual play emerged that at least demonstrated the need for further examination. The online site PokerXFactor even created a playback file containing almost all of the hands recorded for POTRIPPER during the event, including the final table, which was added in from other sources."
Though Absolute Bet initially denied the cheating allegations, the site later confirmed it "was the victim of a breach of security in which a high-ranking consultant to the site devised a sophisticated scheme to manipulate internal systems and access third-party computers and accounts to view the hole cards of other customers during play and without their knowledge, resulting in unfair play."
The fallout from the scandal resulted in several significant changes in the online poker industry. Online poker sites began to implement more rigorous security measures, such as randomising seating assignments and adding two-factor authentication for player accounts. Regulatory bodies also began to take a closer look at online poker operators, with the Kahnawake Gaming Commission coming under fire for its perceived lack of oversight and regulation.
The Scandal Continues on Ultimate Bet
The controversy started with suspicions of unfair play on Absolute Poker, and soon more players came forward with similar concerns about Ultimate Bet. The account "NioNio" was identified as having suspiciously good results beyond statistical norms.In 2008, an internal investigation by Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, the owners of Ultimate Bet, confirmed that cheating had occurred on the site from March 2006 to December 2007. The investigation found that six accounts and 18 screen names, including "NioNio," "Sleepless," "NoPaddles," and "flatbroke33," were involved in the cheating. The perpetrators used unauthorised software code that transferred hole-card information of other players at the tables to their accounts during live play.
As hundreds of players sorted out whether they had been cheated, Ultimate Bet's biggest ambassadors, including Duke, continued to promote the site. However, it was later revealed that Russ Hamilton, a long-time player and the only Main Event winner without a banner hanging in the WSOP tournament area, was the primary offender. Hamilton personally cheated his fellow poker players out of tens of millions of dollars.
Findings released by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in 2009 revealed that the vast majority of the computer devices and IP addresses used by the cheating accounts were directly associated with Russ Hamilton, and the vast majority of the cheating accounts transferred money through his player accounts. The report also noted that 31 other individuals were involved in the cheating, revealing a much wider scope of cheating that went all the way back to June 2003.
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission fined Ultimate Bet $1.5 million and ordered the reimbursement of $22 million to affected players.
Hackers Use Casino CCTV to Scam $33 Million in High-stakes Poker Game
In March 2013, a group of hackers successfully used a complex scheme to cheat a high-stakes poker game at the Crown casino in Melbourne, Australia, winning a total of $33 million. The group's strategy was to use the casino's own security systems against it, gaining an advantage by seeing the opposition's cards through the CCTV cameras in the poker room.The team consisted of a wealthy overseas gambler and several accomplices, including a person who was able to access the casino's CCTV system and relay the information back to the gambler wirelessly.
The gambler checked into one of the Crown's most luxurious $30,000-a-night villas with his family and joined a private high-stakes poker game in a private suite. Over the course of eight hands, the team was able to take the opposition for $33 million, all while avoiding detection by the casino's sophisticated security system.
After the scam was uncovered, the high roller was ejected from his suite in the middle of the night and banned from any future visits, and the VIP handler assigned to look after him was fired.
