Several online poker players have exposed a fraud performed with the help of a cheat code that is estimated at $74 million according to an
MSNBC report. The affected software was run by UltimateBet, a well known online poker website.
UltimateBet is amongst the top poker websites on the Internet and it was acquired by Tokwiro Enterprises in 2006. How the Tokwiro Enterprises got to be the owners of UltimateBet is yet uncertain as the site's last owner, Excapsa Software Inc., a Canadian company, is known to have sold it to a certain Blast-Off Ltd. Since no deal between Blast-Off and Tokwiro has ever been announced, some people are claiming that they are actually the same.
Apparently, an unauthorized software code was used by a few players to view all the cards of their opponents during gameplay. This code could have been implemented in the beginning days of the software for testing or development purposes and could have later leaked out through a former employee of one of the companies that owned UltimateBet over the years.
The fraud was noticed by two players by the nicknames of "trambopoline" and "dlpnyc21" who became suspicious after they lost considerable amounts of money to the same player, going by the handle “NioNio”. During their online investigation on a website that tracks high stakes poker sessions, they noticed that the suspicious player made an impressive $300,000 profit from just 3,000 played hands, thus defying statistical probabilities.
Michael Josem, an Australian mathematician and poker player created a graph with the results from an analysis of tracking data gathered from 870 accounts that had over 2,500 played hands. Compared to that graph, NioNio's win rate proved highly abnormal. Mr. Josem commented on the issue that one would have more chances of “winning a one-in-a-million lottery on four consecutive days" than scoring that win rate.
Since this security hole is attributed to the early days of the software, it's estimated that it has been active for at least two years, during which time huge amounts of money could have been unfairly won. This also prompted accusations towards some of the pro poker players that assisted the original software developers with their technical expertise and knowledge of the game.
Pending an outside investigation underwent by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Tokwiro Enterprises blamed the past owners, which they plan to sue for $74 million for this incident. However, it’s unlikely that the players who lost their money will receive any compensation since most of them are US citizens and online gambling is banned in the US.
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