Absolute Poker Admits Cheating Occured

An Online Poker site just received a phone call from Absolute Poker confirming the suspicions of the online poker community over the past month.  While we need to be vague in this post to respect their wishes, we can say that their systems were compromised, and that they are prepared to provide the details in a statement coming shortly. 

Part of the statement will include a plan to refund players affected by this compromise.

Heres The Back Story , all credit goes to original 2+2 poster .

1.) Second place player (Marco) in a tournament suspects some strange and possibly colluding/cheating plays from the account that wins(Potripper), so he emails Absolute Poker and asks for the hand history of the entire tournament, gets sent an xls file that looks like utter gibberish.

2.) A couple of days later the first Absolute Poker thread that happened here and everywhere else accusing them of being rigged happens.

3.) Two weeks pass.

4.) Player shares his xls file thinking it can help shed some light even though he doesn't understand what he i slooking at.

5.) Prominent 2+2 poster who Marco shares the xls file with realizes that the file that was inadvertently sent is a complete hand history of the tournament showing every table and every hole card of every player for every hand.

6.) Other 2+2 mods/long-time posters discover that the xls file also contains IP addresses and user details including email addresses of people observing the table.

7.) They discover one user, user #363 observes PotRipper's tables the entire tournament only missing two hands at the beginning where user #363 is NOT seated at the table by folding them. Potripper plays literally 100% of the pots preflop for 20 minutes not folding a single other hand until he open-folds when a player has KK behind him (clearly he understands that player will raise and he won't see the pot with his junk this time for the raised amount).

8.) The IP address for user #363 is tracked (obviously) as this player was apparently following around Potripper the suspected cheater the entire time.

9.) The track shows that user #363 uses email on an Absolute Poker server hosted by Kahnawake Gaming Commission.

10.) Further evidence shows that the IP matches an Absolute Poker spammer.

11.) A later poster in the 2+2 threads posts this "If you guys remember, there were two people watching Potripper's table. One is #363; the other is assumed to be Potripper. That second account's email address is scott@rivieraltd.com.

I have talked to a lot of people around the poker world about the IP address used by #363 and the rivieraltd.com email. The IP address cross-references to someone named Scott Tom, who also appears to be an owner at AP. It should also be noted that the first part of the rivieraltd.com email is "scott@". Whoever that second person is, though, their email address is scott@rivieraltd.com, and their IP (which is, as I said, the same as User #363) is identical to a certain Scott Tom's home cable modem. Pokermachine, our relentless AP spammer in the zoo, was a Tom posting from an IP in CR related to AP. The Watchdog posted from the same ip. Login Name for that user is scotttom.