scandal

60 Minutes to Take on Absolute Poker Insider Cheating Scandal

by Wicked Chops Entity on 3.10.2008 in Online Poker,Poker News | 1 comment

Online poker is about to get some unwanted mainstream media attention.

60 Minutes to do story on online poker, Absolute Poker, Liv Boeree is the girl in this pic Word from various sources is that 60 Minutes, the venerable television news program watched mostly by people who do the early bird and smell like mothballs, is doing an investigative story on the Absolute Poker insider cheating scandal, which didn’t so much rock the online poker world last October as much as it became forum fodder for a few weeks then fizzled.

According to Nat Arem, the Atlanta kid who helped break the scandal wide open, veteran reporter Steve Kroft will be getting his Mike Wallace on in places like Canada, Costa Rica and Las Vegas as he does a “soup to nuts” piece on how AJ Green, a VP at Absolute Poker, was able to swindle millions of dollars from online poker players by using a “super user” account that allowed him to see opponent’s hole cards.

From Arem’s blog:

“A few weeks ago, I was contacted by 60 Minutes in conjunction with a reporter from the Washington Post regarding a story about the Absolute Poker scandal from last fall. I was told that they wanted Adanthar and myself for on-camera interviews with Steve Kroft. I later found out they were also interested in interviewing Michael Josem and Marco Johnson. Basically, I spent a little while on the phone with the producer and the Washington Post reporter and recapped the whole story as well as I could from memory. I talked about my involvement and contribution, along with all the other people who were involved.”

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Tagged as: Absolute Poker, cheating, Online Poker, poker, scandal

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Absolute Poker Insider Cheating Scandal Downgraded to “Boring”

by Wicked Chops Entity on 11.12.2007 in Online Poker | no comments

The Absolute Poker insider cheating scandal that first rocked the poker world a few weeks ago, or at least a few poker forums here and there, has gone from the stuff movies are made about (i.e. super user account, rogue employee swindling $7 mil, unicorns, plane loaded with cash crashing on take off, gay sex love fest between Montana frat boys who run AP*) to a total snoozefest.

Putting us asleep most recently was news that Nat Arem, one of the forum-ers who blew the scandal wide open, flew down to Costa Rica on PokerNews.com‘s dime to “investigate” the matter, and he came back unscathed and alive. Yep, no kidnapping, no roughening him up, no smoking gun found after sneaking into someone’s office and going through their desk drawers only seconds away from being caught. Nope, the only thing we got was Arem signing a NDA and Absolute Poker releasing an “interim” statement from some nameless person that doesn’t name names and says as little as possible to as few people as possible (statement, which you can read after the jump below, was sent primarily to a couple people on the forums).

Scotttomajgreen The only thing that really woke us from our slomber was Arem saying on 2p2 that he thinks Scott Tom has retained “his ownership interest and is probably at least more removed than before from operational control.” Not that we didn’t expect this but it’s just that with all the focus on AJ Green, not many people seem to be talking about Tom anymore even though it seems obvious that he was very much in the know with what Green was doing or had done and did everything he could to protect his friend (photo at right of Tom and Green in Montana last winter). It’s also obvious that online poker players are still playing on Absolute Poker and thus don’t really give a damn that with every hand they play they are still putting money in Tom’s pocket.