[3] By October, widespread Internet allegations of cheating led to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission beginning an investigation.
[4][5] Although allegations had been made about several accounts, one of the most remarkable pieces of evidence was a complete history of a tournament which was won by a player called "POTRIPPER".
[7] On October 19, an unofficial source within Absolute Poker claimed that an employee had hacked the system to "prove a point".
As has been speculated in several online forums, this consultant devised a sophisticated scheme to manipulate internal systems to access third-party computers and accounts to view hole cards of other customers during play without their knowledge.
[9]In November 2007, Absolute issued an interim statement claiming the employee cheating had taken place over a period of forty days and that the cardroom was refunding $1.6 million to affected players.
We can now confirm that the cheating began in January 2005, long before Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG acquired UltimateBet from the previous ownership.
[19] According to the company, the fraudulent activity was traced to unauthorized software code that transferred hole-card information of other players to the perpetrators during play.
UltimateBet stated it had removed the cheating software as of February 2008 and began issuing refunds to affected players.
[20] On September 29, 2008, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission stated it had found clear and convincing evidence to support a conclusion that between the approximate dates of May 2004 to January 2008, Russ Hamilton was the main person responsible for, and benefiting from, multiple cheating incidents at Ultimate Bet.
[21][22] On April 15, the Department of Justice seized the .com internet addresses of the three online gambling sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker.
After the Full Tilt Poker remissions process was completed, having returned more than $118 million to affected players, some of the money that had been set aside for it yet remained unclaimed.