Poker Fraud Revealed By Poker Players

The large and successful poker site Absolute Poker, established in 2003, operating in Costa Rica and licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, has had its name associated with a fraud case. The site itself and officials of the Mohawk Indian territory in Quebec have launched their investigation.

The suspicion that games on the site were rigged was first raised by Marco Johnson, 21, of Las Vegas. Johnson asked the site in an email in September for a history of the cards he was dealt during a tournament, in which he finished second and felt cheated.

"There were just too many weird hands at the final table," Johnson said. "My friends thought I got cheated."

He received more than he asked for: a document with the hand histories of all tournament participants, along with their e-mail addresses and the IP address. Johnson was not sure if the file, with information of all hands played at the entire 14 tables tournaments, was sent by mistake or released by an insider, but was alert enough to pass it on, which then led to an investigation into the matter.

Friends and trusted amateur poker players who Johnson contacted identified interesting trends. One poker player noticed that the user Potripper, who also happened to be the tournament winner, was making bad decisions, such as betting a large sum on a 10 high. Another computer wiz noticed there was a suspicious user by the name #363 who was present at each game Potripper was betting on, but was not seen by other players, only could likely see their hands.

Playing Texas Hold'em, it was suspicious that whenever #363 was present, Potripper did not fold, for stretches as long as a half hour, a rare practice for a poker player. More suspicious even was that #363's IP address originated from where absolute Poker's offices are.

It led investigators to company part-owner Scott Tom. The Potripper account led to the company's former director of operations, AJ Ripper. From there it quickly led to the sotry surfacing on The New York Time's Freakonomics blog and to the official investigations into what may be a fraud case of anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million over a two week period or so.

Whereas the poker industry will probably be hurt a little by such stories, the industry, estimated between $9 and $12 billion will not be too hurt. It might use it as motivation to tighten security measures.

Absolute Poker meanwhile has its reputation to defend. First they released a statement updating its members of the incident and the audit in process. It read the following:

"We acknowledge a significant internal security breach whereby a resource who was infinitely knowledgeable about the system [i.e. a company employee, OCR] was able to get into the accounts in question. He played on those accounts and he saw hole cards."

It is now also calling users personally, those whose information and hand history was disclosed on the file sent to Johnson, along with $500 to play at the site.