Exploit used to see all players cards
It took a bit of detective work, and a lot of statistical analysis, but an online poker player Michael Josem took upon himself to uncover a huge online poker scam. After studying great amounts of data, Michael Josem uncovered a group of people winning games almost at 100% of the time, and playing much faster than normal. The scam has been going on for about 3 years.
The thieving epidemic was discovered at poker sites Absolute Poker and UtimateBet. It was an internal scam -- a group of employees working within both companies used an software exploit that allowed them to see all the cards people were holding. Knowing what everyone was holding, the scammers brazenly folded and bet with impunity, winning as many matches as the could, without trying very hard to cover their tracks.
"Every online poker hand is recorded electronically and can be analyzed after the fact. Just as the third umpire video replay can be used to enforce the rules in cricket, third-party analysis can be used to enforce the rules of poker," Michael Josem was quoted as saying. "The chances of [the investigated] players winning at those rates is approximately equal to winning a one-in-a-million lottery on six consecutive occasions," said Josem. "If you know what cards your opponent has, you'll never lose - and this is precisely what happened."
It's pretty tough to figure out how much money was scammed from unknowing players because after they become a subject of an investigation by the the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Absolute Poker went on a record-erasing rampage and destroyed all the incriminating records. The Gaming Commision fined Absolute Poker $500,000 for the cover up, and then just this week, laid another $1.5 million dollar fine in an on-going investigation.
Humorously enough, one of the top scammers was Russ Hamilton -- a guy considered to be a world-class, professional poker player.
Michael Josem may be the only one left with a smile on his face after the end of the investigation of Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. Because of his diligence in uncovering this scam, one of the largest pokers sites in the world, PokerStars, offered him a job on their security team.
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Awesome! I suppose security in general with these sites will be tightened and require dudes like Josem around. Good for him.
But I am surprised that these cheaters just won every match. If they least lost a small portion of hands, just for appearances, they probably would not have been caught.
Cheaters!
Really this is probably like the 1 in 100th online poker scam that actually got exposed. The industry has hardly any oversight, and is pretty much semi-legal in North America anyways (which is why all the offices are in places like Bermuda, etc. )