New "Smoking Gun" UB Tapes have Russ Hamilton admitting cheating!

[nightmarefish]

#3 -- She was more than a big part of the EPL Fail, she was running the league AND she lied to the poker community regarding the League's solvency. She said there was a scheduling conflict when they canceled the last event, when the truth was they were trying to sell the thing to Pinnacle. She said they had multiple years of operational funds ready and this was a long-term project from jump-street which was obviously untrue since they never made it through Season 1.


I don't know if anyone has matched up the dates but I have a strong feeling that the major backers of the EPL were crippled by black Friday(to include her brother). That's why all of a sudden the money ran out.

[neveragain39]

I don't know if anyone has matched up the dates but I have a strong feeling that the major backers of the EPL were crippled by black Friday(to include her brother). That's why all of a sudden the money ran out.

Money ran out for the following reasons.

1 black friday crushed the poker economy.
2 Epic couldn't find the big league sponsorship and /or tv deals.
3 Jeffrey and Annie obscenely overpaid themselves based on corp revenue streams.
4 conflicts with scheduling around other established tours.

Annie is a liar and a pos.

[nightmarefish]

I don't know if anyone has matched up the dates but I have a strong feeling that the major backers of the EPL were crippled by black Friday(to include her brother). That's why all of a sudden the money ran out.

Money ran out for the following reasons.

1 black friday crushed the poker economy.
2 Epic couldn't find the big league sponsorship and /or tv deals.
3 Jeffrey and Annie obscenely overpaid themselves based on corp revenue streams.
4 conflicts with scheduling around other established tours.

Annie is a liar and a pos.

All of those points may be true but if Black Friday doesn't happen EPL would still be running. Basically, I think her brother was willing to back it for a couple of years even if it was losing money.

[Deal]

All of those points may be true but if Black Friday doesn't happen EPL would still be running. Basically, I think her brother was willing to use FTP player funds to back it for a couple of years even if it was losing money.

Had to add some words for accuracy.

[BUBBLES]

And a response from Phil Hellmuth

I've made a living off of reading people at the poker table and in the business world. Trusting my gut has allowed me to be at the top of my profession and develop a lifetime of friends and great experiences.

Unfortunately, I made a horrible read regarding my relationship with the founders of the now defunct online poker site Ultimate Bet.

I trusted their team and believed in their ability to run a first class website and business. Most importantly, I allowed them to convince me that they were honest and forthright. I've never been more wrong about anything in my life.

When I became aware of the cheating scandal, I immediately insisted that everyone be paid back and whoever was responsible be banished from the company. At the time, I was led to believe that if I left UB right away the business would be impacted and then less likely to pay it's obligations to the victims. As such, I made the decision to believe the leaders of UB and stayed on in the hopes that they would make right to anyone cheated.

Listening to the recently released audio tapes of the UB founders has brought this situation back into the forefront of my thoughts. To hear them discussing this situation and actively deciding to keep me in the dark disgusts and infuriates me. They lied to me about their activities and I made a big mistake in trusting them for way too long.

I should have said something about this long ago, but until I heard the voices on the tapes myself I never really knew how wrong and misled I really was. I empathize deeply with the players who were taken advantage of through UB. Whether it is this or Black Friday, too many of my fellow poker players have lost confidence and their financial savings simply by playing the game they love. I hope that in the near future we have a strong, regulated online poker environment in the US so that we can all get back to playing the game we love. In the meantime, I want to pass along my support to everyone affected negatively through UB and my apologies for my initial support of people who didn’t deserve anyone’s trust in the first place.

[BeerAndPoker]

Hellmuth's fault is he's too into himself and the check he was getting from UB that he didn't care much about what was going on at the time. I don't fault him until the scandal came out at which point he should have disassociated his name with UB right away OR played leader in making sure things were done right among the players which he didn't do either of these.

So in ways Phil is guilty by association and not caring enough about not only his personal image but the players as well. He's got a lot of shit going on in life being what would be considered an "A" list in the poker world that it's not surprising he didn't see stuff wasn't right but to not do enough afterward was a very poor decision.

[chinamaniac]

***EDIT*** Remember this? http://www.guidetopoker.com/annie-du...-tournie_16259 Funny that her Boyfriend at the time won this tournament. Wonder if she had access to the "AuditMonster" during this event?

"Having Annie around doesn't hurt either," says Reitman. "Since Annie started teaching me how to play like a pro, my game has improved ten-fold."

[chinamaniac]

2nd sound clip is up here:

https://soundcloud.com/professionalp...ub-recording-2


In it, Russ talks about how he has a friend at interpol, and is getting copies all of the emails that trambopoline and Nat Arem were sending talking about the cheating.

Also how he could win the British open using only 1 club lol

LOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

pure hof (twice)

[Skellir]

In that 1k freesout that Annies boyfriend won was there at the time given out the hand history of that tourney does anyone remember that.
Back in the time when this came out made me believe at least as i saw 100% that Annie had the god mode. Anyone who knows anything about online Mtts knows that 1k events are incredible diffecult to win and this one had a huge field it just doesnt make any sense she or her boyfriend must have been cheating.

[DutchDoDo]

Perhaps I missed it, but who is releasing these tapes? Any more or these 2 tapes are it?

[tradershky]

How about exposing Greg Pierson's involvement to Iovation's business partners - https://www.iovation.com/company/partners/ and BOD's https://www.iovation.com/company/board/

I'm calling Experian to cancel my account now and I'm going to tell them why.

Druff - Can you start a PFA Facebook page? It would make this stuff easier to share

[v12cl]

How about exposing Greg Pierson's involvement to Iovation's business partners - https://www.iovation.com/company/partners/ and BOD's https://www.iovation.com/company/board/

I'm calling Experian to cancel my account now and I'm going to tell them why.

Druff - Can you start a PFA Facebook page? It would make this stuff easier to share

Amazes me that this Greg Pierson guy can continue to slip buy. Posted this on twoplustwo last night, did you know he is up for some Entrepreneur of the Year in the Pacific Northwest?

Someone should call the contest contacts (listed on the bottom left) and clue them in to his history, and how it makes their organization and sponsors look, will be much easier and more embarrassing for him than trying to get somewhere at Experian.

http://www.ey.com/US/en/About-us/Ent...view_Page_Main

On a side note, spent some time last night putting together the framework for a world class trolling campaign for iovation Greg Pierson

[Dan Druff]

How about exposing Greg Pierson's involvement to Iovation's business partners - https://www.iovation.com/company/partners/ and BOD's https://www.iovation.com/company/board/

I'm calling Experian to cancel my account now and I'm going to tell them why.

Druff - Can you start a PFA Facebook page? It would make this stuff easier to share

Amazes me that this Greg Pierson guy can continue to slip buy. Posted this on twoplustwo last night, did you know he is up for some Entrepreneur of the Year in the Pacific Northwest?

Someone should call the contest contacts (listed on the bottom left) and clue them in to his history, and how it makes their organization and sponsors look, will be much easier and more embarrassing for him than trying to get somewhere at Experian.

http://www.ey.com/US/en/About-us/Ent...view_Page_Main

On a side note, spent some time last night putting together the framework for a world class trolling campaign for iovation Greg Pierson

That's a great page.

I agree that people should contact those involved with Greg Pierson (and those offering him awards LOL) and let them know the real story.

Perhaps someone should cut Greg's voice from those tapes and put together some of his greatest hits.

[Dan Druff]

Perhaps I missed it, but who is releasing these tapes? Any more or these 2 tapes are it?

Travis Makar is releasing them.

[haleylh]

I found it interesting that iovation doesn't even have a wiki page.

[Dan Druff]

The prop manager (with the "drug problem") Russ referred to was Lisa Starke.

She had been around online poker since the beginning. She played as "Doctor S" on Planet Poker, as early as 1999. She was also quite active on Paradise Poker and True Poker, and later UB. On UB, she played as "Thannytoes".

Lisa was actually an MD. I don't know the details of what happened to her medical practice, but I know that she no longer practiced medicine at the time of her prop job on UB. In fact, I remember being at a 30-60 limit game with her, and a guy who didn't like her was making fun of her in the chat for "spending all that time and money getting an MD, just to become a low-paid prop."

I did not know about her alleged drug problems. I met her once at Bellagio. She appeared to be in her mid-40s (this was about 7 years ago), and was accompanied by a young skater-looking dude who couldn't have been older than 23. It was one of the oddest looking couples I had seen in a long time. She did have the look of someone who might have been a drug addict at some point.

Her allegation about being cheated at the middle limit games is interesting, and I actually believe her.

It should be noted that, in later years, she went by Lisa Spain (married name?), and became uncooperative. She apparently recanted her story and would not do an interview with Scott Bell. Would be interesting to locate her at this point.

Almost all of the cheating remuneration payments were to NL players. Limit players received little or no compensation, despite an admission that the cheaters sometimes played as high as 300-600 limit. I was an active UB limit player, and I received a whopping $2000 as a refund, which was a joke considering my regular games ranged from 50-100 to 300-600. I did far worse on UB than any other site, and I was a big time net loser there. I always felt something shady was going on, but decided not to say anything because I had no proof and just assumed I lost because I ran/played bad.

If you think about it, Russ and friends would have to be idiots not to cheat the limit games, especially the big ones, since they ran fairly often and you could make big money at them.

I am not sure if they bothered cheating limit games like 15-30 and 30-60, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. The only problem with cheating games like that is that it would take a long time to really run up big money. I mean, you can run up 10k at online 30-60 after a few hours if you run really hot (or cheat), but if you can take the same amount off a high stakes NL player in one hand, why bother wasting time with 30-60 limit?

I totally believe the 300-600 and similar limit games were victimized big time, though.

Oh, and I remember seeing "NoPaddles" sitting at heads-up 25-50 NL tables when I was browsing UB games. NoPaddles seemed to constantly be there, just waiting for a new victim. Disgusting.

[Dan Druff]

Many have gotten excited about reporting Russ to the IRS, perhaps to get a percentage of any back taxes he's forced to pay.

Don't bother with this. It will never work unless Russ was lying about declaring $5.2 million in online poker winnings.

Russ claims that he staked players with much of the cheating winnings (and obviously much of it disappeared, perhaps funding Iovation or whatever), so it's very possible that $5.2 million is an accurate and true representation of what he withdrew from the site that year in cash.

The whistle-blower reward requires that you have some kind of concrete information to back up your claims. The IRS is very strict about this.

They have this restriction in order to prevent people from engaging in "tax cheat freerolls" and wasting their time. If they only required a tip and not hard evidence, a person could just report 100 different people they suspect MIGHT cheat on their taxes, hoping that one will end up being guilty and they'd collect the reward. In the meantime, the IRS would waste their time investigating a lot of innocent people.

For this reason, the IRS also tends to ignore most reports that come from third parties without hard evidence. Lots of bitter ex-wives and ex-employees submit tax fraud claims to the IRS as a form of revenge, but most of these are ignored because they lack any concrete proof.

I'm sure if the IRS did a big investigation of Russ, they would find some tax cheating, but these tapes unfortunately don't provide that proof.

Now, if he was on tape saying, "I made $5.2 million this year with these accounts, and I don't want the IRS finding out about it", then yes, they would probably go after him and the person submitting it would get a reward if they collected from him.

But that's not what's on the tape. He says he DID report $5.2 million in earnings, and he says it in a way that seems to indicate he accurately reported, not that he got away with only reporting $5 million when he made $20 million.

[Dan Druff]

You'll hear in the tapes that Russ was worried about "the transfers" being exposed, and that the people on the internet had yet to figure out the most damaging piece of information that comes from them.

It was a little bit hard to follow, but I took this to mean that Russ was concerned about the transfers that went to pay company bills.

See, they were looking to pin it on a no-name like Travis, and simply say that Russ' computer guy abused his access and cheated everyone. It appears that Travis was willing to go along with this, presumably for some substantial compensation. (This plan was scrapped when Russ' involvement became public and irrefutable.)

On AP, they did something similar, blaming the whole thing on AJ Green, while attempting to publicly exonerate Scott Tom and the others.

Anyway, Russ was concerned that the transfers being used to pay "server bills" would be a provable link to the cheating being done by ownership.

If some random employee abuses his access and cheats people, that is recoverable from a PR standpoint.

If the cheating is on behalf of the company itself, and if some of the cheating proceeds go toward company bills, that looks terrible and there's no way to spin that into anything but what it actually was.

[Sandwich]

See, they were looking to pin it on a no-name like Travis, and simply say that Russ' computer guy abused his access and cheated everyone. It appears that Travis was willing to go along with this, presumably for some substantial compensation. (This plan was scrapped when Russ' involvement became public and irrefutable.)

This sounds right. But it's still unclear (to me, anyway) how the recordings came about. So, Russ Hamilton obviously intentionally records himself in meetings with these guys (not his attorney) and admits to cheating, admits responsibility, tries to help minimize UB's exposure and cover up the full extent of the wrongdoing and consequent damage, etc., etc.
What was Russ's purpose? To make a record that others should share the blame too, as he didn't want the entire thing pinned solely on him at some point down the road? And then Travis Makar obtains these recordings and keeps them as an insurance policy against the entire thing being pinned on HIM? Even though, apparently Travis "was willing to go along with this, presumably for some substantial compensation"? So if things got bad enough, he could whip out the recordings and say he was framed?

This is pretty confusing... Am I missing something here, or is the above a fair statement of basically what Russ's and Travis's motives are for making and keeping these recordings?

[Steve-O]

You'll hear in the tapes that Russ was worried about "the transfers" being exposed, and that the people on the internet had yet to figure out the most damaging piece of information that comes from them.

It was a little bit hard to follow, but I took this to mean that Russ was concerned about the transfers that went to pay company bills.

See, they were looking to pin it on a no-name like Travis, and simply say that Russ' computer guy abused his access and cheated everyone. It appears that Travis was willing to go along with this, presumably for some substantial compensation. (This plan was scrapped when Russ' involvement became public and irrefutable.)

On AP, they did something similar, blaming the whole thing on AJ Green, while attempting to publicly exonerate Scott Tom and the others.

Anyway, Russ was concerned that the transfers being used to pay "server bills" would be a provable link to the cheating being done by ownership.

If some random employee abuses his access and cheats people, that is recoverable from a PR standpoint.

If the cheating is on behalf of the company itself, and if some of the cheating proceeds go toward company bills, that looks terrible and there's no way to spin that into anything but what it actually was.

That's an interesting take. I only listened to it once so far, but I initially took this to mean the people who received the transfers might be implicated in some way. What part of the tape is this at so I can go back and listen to it?