A statement was finally released by Absolute Poker on Sunday by Joe Norton about the inside cheating scandal. He was the former Great Chief of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. In the statement he identified himself as the owner of Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, which is the holder of 100% interest in Absolute Poker.
The statement that was released acknowledged that there was a security breach in Absolute Poker’s systems, which allowed information about other player’s hole cards to be accessed to several suspect accounts. They also confirmed that the hand log that was given to Marco Johnson, who was the runner-up of the questionable tournament, did actually highlight the breach in security that allowed the site to be compromised.
Absolute Poker has identified someone that they claim is to blame for the breach of security in their statement. The one to blame is a high ranking trusted consultant employed by Absolute Poker. His position gave him particular access to certain security systems. They never released the high ranking consultants name in the statement but they did go on to say that he devised a very thought out scheme to manipulate internal systems to access third-party computers and their accounts, so that they could see the hole cards of other customer’s who were in play without their knowledge. They also said in the statement that the high ranking consultant was immediately terminated when they found out who was behind the breach of security.
The statement goes on to say that Absolute Poker plans on paying for the losses to players who can be traced to the cheating accounts. This is only pending the results of the audit that is being done by the Gaming Associates and the other audit that is being done by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. The statement also said that Absolute Poker plans on cooperating with any other investigation that may be done by other jurisdictional or regulatory body.
Absolute Poker has started doing the two-part process that is connected to the release of the spreadsheet that contained information about the questionable tournament. The first part is Absolute Poker has started to issue payments of $500 to any watchers of the tournament whose e-mail address got included on the file.
The second part is that Absolute Poker is starting the process of refunding the players of questionable tournament that was held on September 12th. All the players who cashed will be moved up a spot and all players in the event will also be receiving a refund of $1,000+50 for the entry fee, plus the interest calculated at 10% per annum. This will come out to be about 1%.
It is believed that 96 out of the 98 players will be receiving these refund payments. The two players that won’t be receiving the refunds are Potripper, who was the cheating account that won the tournament, and GrayCat, who is one of the suspect accounts that is connected to the scandal.
Absolute Poker has also said that they plan on beginning work on calculating refunds based on cash-game play that the suspect accounts were involved in. The entire list has not been released yet. Those payments are expected to come within the audit that is being done by the Gaming Associates.