It has been a while since the “superuser” cheating scandal at Absolute Poker (AP) has been the hot topic of conversation, but new evidence has come to light which seems to point overwhelmingly to AP co-founder, Scott Tom, as the primary culprit. The evidence comes courtesy of Haley Hintze, a former editor of PokerNews.com and a well-respected poker blogger. Hintze has spent much of her time over the last couple of years attempting to uncover as much information as possible about the scandal in an effort to educate the poker public and determine who was responsible.
Hintze was able to acquire screen shots of the cheaters’ accounts from AP’s and UB’s administrative systems, images which, when combined with knowledge of how the systems work, made Hintze pretty sure that AP’s co-founder was the man behind the cheating. Hintze posted some of these screen grabs on her blog over the weekend, along with explanations of what viewers were seeing.
The first screen shot shows basic account information for Tom’s player account, “PotChopper,” created in June 2005. Next, Hintze shares a screen shot from UB’s anti-fraud program, ieSnare, which was able to view AP accounts after the two poker rooms joined forces to form the CEREUS Network. The image actually shows records of the “PotChopper” account’s logins to UB, including IP addresses, dates and times, and something called an “NUID Set,” which Hintze guesses may be a unique computer identifier. “PotChopper” has two NUID Sets, which could possibly indicate logins from two different computers (laptop and desktop, perhaps).
Following that screenshot comes another from the AP side, showing logins corresponding to the User ID 11451887 that was assigned to Tom’s computer. His user ID was matched up with logins by the most prominent superuser account, “PotRipper.” Hintze points out that five logins were pulled up for the “PotRipper” account, all containing the User ID 11451887, as well as Tom’s NUID Sets. The first line of the screen shot (which is the last one chronologically) directly corresponds to the infamous $1,000 Sunday tournament won by “PotRipper.”
Hintze then posted screen shots of logins by two other confirmed cheating accounts – “GrayCat” and “Doubledrag” – showing associations with the same User ID and IP addresses.
To further make her point that Tom was in charge of these cheating accounts, Hintze posted a screen shot of the financial history of the “PotRipper” account. On September 10, 2007, “PotRipper” received a $70,000 transfer from “Doubledrag.” The following day, AP’s system automatically flagged it because of its size and took $70,217.25 out of the account (there were some funds in the account before the “Doubledrag” transfer), marking the reversal “Black List User.” An hour and a half later, the action was by an operations supervisor. Five days later, on September 16th, Tom withdrew $85,000 from the account.
One might ask why the “Black List User” transaction was overridden. Hintze has the answer. “PotRipper’s” account, along with the other cheating accounts, were labeled with the following: “HEADS UP. PLEASE DO NOT CLOSE THIS ACCOUNT FOR ANY REASON. ISSUES PLEASE CONSULT WITH BRENT, ADRIAN OR NOLAN.” The “Brent” listed in the note is allegedly Brent Beckley, Tom’s step-brother. Thus, it is apparent to Hintze that Tom knew some transactions would be flagged, but took the appropriate steps to ensure that a low-level employee would not seize the funds.
The reaction to Hintze’s post has not created as major of a stir as one might expect. Most comments on the Two Plus Two poker forum either praise Haley Hintze for her work, call for Tom’s head, or both. Some interesting insight came from Two Plus Two poster “Mookman,” who has been one of the poker community leaders in uncovering information about UB.com in light of the cheating scandals.
Mookman dug up an interview with Paul Leggett, COO of Tokwiro Enterprises, which owns both AP and UB. In the interview, Leggett said a number of things that appear to be refuted by Hintze’s evidence:
1. Only one person was involved in the cheating.
2. None of the money that the cheater won left the site.
3. Tom’s name was “dragged into this” by the actual perpetrator, as the perpetrator used Tom’s IP address to access whatever systems were needed to conduct the cheating.
These, among other tidbits, made “Mookman” naturally skeptical of Leggett and the new management of AP and UB’s involvement in a potential cover-up. It is, of course, very possible that the new management did not have knowledge of all of the damning evidence at the time of the interview, either.
Hintze’s original article can be read in its entirety here.