Poker Blog

Joe Sebok Steps up and gets burned

If anyone knows anything about online poker, they are aware of the Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker scandals. Unfortunately, due to his choices in recent days, people in the poker community also know Joe Sebok. Sebok is an Ultimate Bet Poker Pro. In recent days, FatalError a former friend called him out for blackmailing him to get him to stop talking about Ulitmate Bet. In an effort to clear the air, Sebok signed up for and posted to the 2+2 forum.
In his apology it became clear that the aforementioned former friend and Joe were close enough to know personal details about each other. This information, and the fact that Joe Sebok took the time, and responsibility for his exceptionally poor choice in words, leads to the understanding that his intentions were not to blackmail. His original choice of wording, taken out of context and full understanding of the situation, easily leads a person to the thought the man is or intended to blackmail his previous buddy. As such, the 2+2 thread was relentless in conversation with him.
Through the course of more than 250 posts, Joe Sebok fielded what questions he was able to. Unfortunately those were few and even further between. His best answer was that Paul could answer the plethora of questions. Most of the posters agreed and jumped all over the idea. Many stating that it is Paul’s silence in the forum, and others like it, that lead to a continued distrust of Ultimate Bet and their representatives. Ike – a 2+2 moderator – assured Joe that if he could identify what manner Paul would respond to questions from active and selective participants on the forum, he would facilitate it. Now, after all that has been done at Ultimate Bet, will the voice of knowledge take the offer and face the music with an open mind and offer free information? Many speculate that even with solid ground and protection from the masses, Paul Leggett, will continue to hide from the hard questions

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Former World Series of Poker Champion and Ultimate Bet Consultant Banned From MGM Casinos

MGM has gained a lot of respect throughout the poker community by banning Russ Hamilton, former World Series of Poker Main Event champion and consultant for the infamous Ultimate Bet poker room. Last week, Russ came into the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas to play a few hands. Needless to say, a few players who were at his table recognized Hamilton and let the world know that he was in fact a cheater who scammed several members of Ultimate Bet Poker between May 2004 and January 2008. These dealings led to a refund of over $22 million with Hamilton being responsible for $6.1 million.

MGM Grand decided that it would be in the best interest of their customers to ban Russ from their establishments. This isn’t the first supposed ban that he has faced. Rumors have stated that Harrah’s has put him on their list of guests who are not welcome at their establishments. The decision has been well received by the poker community.

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Disclaimer: The following does not reflect the opinions of PokerBloggs.com.

Haley Hintze, former Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews.com, has been running a series of blogs related to the UltimateBet (now UB.com) cheating scandal. Saturday, she decided to shift her focus away from the UltimateBet scandal and provided her user with what she called evidence that Scott Tom, former head of Absolute Poker, was indeed the person responsible for the cheating scandal involving PotRipper.

She starts off the blog rehashing the whole Absolute Cheating scandal and stating that she has been among the many entities that Scott Tom has threatened with libel suits due to speaking out against him and AP. She has obtained what she considers evidence that proves that Scott Tom may indeed be the force behind the AP scandal and the other involved players may have been pawns in his game.

She starts by providing information from the anti-fraud software “ieSnare” that AP purchased from UltimateBet. She shows the information for account PotChopper that clearly points to Scott Tom as the owner.

Next, she explains how that the software assigns an ID to each new computer that logged onto AP. Tom’s primary computer was assigned “11451887.” Using this ID, the software can show where the account was logged on at. It showed that two unique machines logged onto the site from various location, but always the same two computers.

Next, she stated that his pc’s ID was linked to several of the known cheating accounts, including PotRipper, the account that brought the cheating scandal to the forefront. If you look at the image following, you will see that the device and NUID sets match those for logins from PotChopper.

Next, she produced an image of what she said was the “Graycat” account that was also involved in the cheating scandal. As you can see from the image, the ID and NUID again matches other accounts. She also provided the same information for the “Doubledrag” account.

Hintze then goes on to claim that Scott Tom was indeed behind the computer and using these accounts and not being “hacked” as he had claimed. She then produced evidence of several large deposits and a substantial withdrawal from Scott Tom’s account. Notice that he received a transfer for $70,000 from Double Drag and the account was immediately black listed. However, the account was then cleared within less than two hours and according to Hintze, this was based on directives from upper management which she stated was Scott Tom and others.

After winning a huge tourney on September 13th, 2007, Hintze indicated that Tom chip dumped a large portion of his “winnings” to other cheater accounts. After making the $70,000 withdrawal, she claims he then blacklisted the account. She states that the same was done to other accounts so that the majority of money was taken off the site.

Hintze then points out that the cheating accounts were flagged so that customer service would not close the account. She provided an image that shows the PotRipper account with the comment “Please do not close this account for any reason. Issues please consult with Brent, Adrian or Nolan.” Most of the pertinent information has been removed but she believes that the information was a “college buddy” he was using to launder money.

The allegations made by Hintze have not been proven by any other source as of the time of the writing of this article. Hintze did not reveal her sources. Should this prove to be true, it would raise a new set of questions and confirm the beliefs of many conspiracy theorists that, like Hintze, believed that Scott Tom was the head of the AP cheating scandal all along. Hintze says that she has more to publish on this matter at a future date so this isn’t the last that we will hear on this story.

- James Guill

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AJ Green aka Potripper who was the main guy in the Absolute Poker Super Accounts scandal is alledged
to be Allan Grimard. I’m not sure if this is true or not. I did some investigating and found that AllanGrimard.com is registered in Costa Rica. This makes sense,but does not make it true. I found pics online of the possible poker cheaters Scott Tom and AJ Green AKA Pottripper AKA Allan Grimard.
AJ Green:

Scott Tom:

Registrant:
ALLAN GRIMARD
ESCAZU
SAN JOSE, SAN JOSE 90121
Costa Rica

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: ALLANGRIMARD.COM
Created on: 09-Oct-06
Expires on: 09-Oct-11
Last Updated on:

Administrative Contact:
GRIMARD, ALLAN PEPTONA@HOTMAIL.COM
ESCAZU
SAN JOSE, SAN JOSE 90121
Costa Rica
++5068668850

Technical Contact:
GRIMARD, ALLAN PEPTONA@HOTMAIL.COM
ESCAZU
SAN JOSE, SAN JOSE 90121
Costa Rica
++5068668850

Domain was bought almost one year to the date of the scandal!

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