Poker Frauds

Some of the world's biggest frauds in the online poker business:

- Russ Hamilton stole millions of $ at highstakes and tournaments at absolute poker and ultimate bet. Absolute poker and it's regulator (Kahnawake Gaming Commission) denied until the end the fraud that was taking place by the network itself saying that there network was super safe (like all networks advertise). This case came to public in 2+2 where there were so many proves of internal fraud that Kahnawake Gaming Commission was forced to do something and in theory they obligated absolute poker to compensate their players in 22 millions of $, applied a 1,5 million $ fine and obligated absolute poker to change several points of their operations to guarantee that the same wouln't happen again.

PS: Cereus Poker only has 2 skins: AP (former Absolute Poker) and UB (former Ultimate Bet). The list of compensated players wasn't made public so the truth cannot be confirmed. There is also no way to confirm if the fine was applied and who got that 1,5 million $ in case they were fined. The new methods to guarantee that the fraud won't happen again weren't advertised either so the guarantee is exactly the same as before: None.

PS2: KGC only acted when AP required KGC intervention.

Read more in:
http://news.cnet.com/60-minutes-report-how-online-gamblers-unmasked-cheaters/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahnawake_Gaming_Commission

http://www.tokwiro.com/community-philanthropy.asp (donations made by Tokwiro that owns Cereus Network to the indigenous community of the Kahanawake that could be seen as a bribe since the relation between regulator and regulated isn't obviously neutral)

http://www.gamingcommission.ca/news/pr09112009a.pdf (Report of KGC where anyone can confirm that KGC failed miserably (and maybe intentionally) their regulation since the fraud took at least 4 years and the illicit software was introduced before 2005. Probably it was the original software since the software historic was inexistent.)

- Smaller networks already frozen and stole funds through operators that were created and closed to steal money. This was already commented in 2+2 forum. This means that the players that had their funds in those poker skins lost their funds or took years to get it back.

- The bots case at PokerStars in cash and DONs are suspected to be created by PokerStars itself. This suspicions make sense since PokerStars is known by their extreme security system that many times is unfair to players that are considered as suspects. In that case PokerStars block the accounts letting (or not) that the players withdraw their funds but they can't come again to PokerStars. This is made by an automated system that traces your player profile and easily detects if you are breaking the pattern. Then they check the flagged account and decide what to do. Given this situation it is very hard to think that someone would try to run bots in the "safest" poker room in the world risking to lose thousands of dollars in the blocked accounts and all the time spent in the bot conception. Please note that these bots played on PokerStars several months and were detected by human players using simple methods by normal software tools. PokerStars failed to trace bots pattern? Specially when you have advanced bot detection tools and access to all cards? When there is such a breach of a tight security it is very likely that we are facing internal network fraud. Of course that would need to be investigated and proven by law enforcements since normal players don't have access to IPs, device IDs and bank accounts. At the DONs the chinese colluders movements (all from the same city) were so obvious that any anti collusion software would flag all players involved in a couple of days even without access to the cards. Once again players had to report the situation and fight for it because PokerStars security ?failed? once again.

Read more in:
http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/2010/05/49-player-chinese-cheating-scandal-on.html
http://www.coinflip.com/news/collusion-scandal-pokerstars-don-sit-gos.html

Please note that it WASN'T POKERSTARTS that detected the collusion like many websites advertise (affiliates from PokerStars). The fraud was discovered by the players once again and heavly discussed at the 2+2 forum. PokerStars only blocked accounts after the scandal. Please note once again that PokerStars traces the behavior of every player and detects breaks in players patterns making it impossible for a player to collude for such a long period without the knowledge of their security department.

Now the DONs were replaced by a game called 50+50 where collusion is much easier to go unnoticed. If the "chinese players" were playing again no one could report any hand because in 50+50 you can justify most of the hands that you couldn't explain in DONs. Obviously they will keep catching the colluders that they want by seeing all cards, IPs, IDs and so on. The only thing that changed is that a normal player won't be able to detect collusion so easy since you won't be able to recognize collusion moves without access to all cards.

- Fulltilt was closed by the FBI having only 15% of the players funds. In theory they had around 390 millions of $ in players funds but only had 60 millions of $ in the company bank account. There are suspicions that FTP always worked that way since it doesn't allow players to extract more than 15% of the total players funds. The rest 85% is extracted through rake and other illegal methods like running bots/players from the network that extract money. Unfortunately for some reason the FBI investigated and closed FTP charging them of Ponzi scheme, money laundring among other crimes.

PS: Most of the money was stolen by FTP administration and professional players closed to administration to their personal bank accounts.

Read more:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000046671
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquema_Ponzi
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/12039-united-states-department-of-justice-claims-howard-lederer-chris-ferguson-ray-bitar-defrauded-players-of-440-million

Please note that Chris Ferguson is one of the main fraudsters that stole around 25 million $ and he made advertisement to FTP like: "From zero to hero" where he would get from 0$ up to 10 000$ starting on freerolls:

http://www.chrisferguson.com/pt/article-4
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/pt/chris-ferguson-challenge

Some players accused FTP of inciting gambling through false propaganda and that this kind of advertisement was created and manipulated to bring more players to the game that believed in such deeds. Obviously no one will know if it was really him or not to do such deed and if he was playing in a fair way or not. All that we can prove is that he has a very bad character since he stole 25 million $ without any moral problam.

- There are also some poker rooms that block accounts for some reason (regardless of the it's gravity) and keep the blocked funds for themselves. Also it is very common to ask for documents when a player try to cashout and in case you provided any false information the account is blocked and funds seized. (for your security obviously. if the player was a fraudster he managed to defraud others and only at the time of cashout he was blocked. leaving the defrauded players exactly in the same situation that they were regardless of the block)

- Always do a good google search before you play poker. Google the skin and the network by frauds, collusion, chipdumping, blocking accounts and so on. This way you can try to minimize the number of frauds you will be a victim of.


PS: Any news or suspcions that you consider important to share with the poker world regarding poker network frauds please don't hesitate in contacting us! We also appreciate any corrections and extra information that you might have related to the above cases.


Contact: pokerguardians@gmail.com