Stuart Gordon, CEO of Antiguan-based Blanca Games Inc., has responded to the allegations of a ‘newly discovered’ cheating scandal at UltimateBet.com. The allegations were revealed in a document arising from the liquidation of Excapsa Software, the former owners of Ultimate Bet. Blanca acquired the Cereus Network, home to Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, in August of this year.
Claiming that Blanca has no interest in the dispute between Excapsa and Tokwiro Enterprises (which acquired Ultimate Bet from Excapsa in 2006), Gordon nevertheless wishes to clarify his company’s understanding of the ‘newly discovered’ incident in the following statement released to shareholders of Excapsa.
Blanca understands and believes that the incident referred to by the Liquidator dates back to 2004 when the ultimatebet.com brand was owned and operated by Excapsa. The Liquidator has recently advised Blanca’s employees that Excapsa closed the security breach at issue in early 2005. Blanca has no knowledge of whether or not this incident is, in fact, “newly discovered”. It does, however, understand that two player accounts were involved in this 2004 incident, and that the damages sustained by players were less than USD$100,000. The incident has been reported to the appropriate regulatory authorities and Blanca is fully cooperating with the regulators’ inquiry.
It is important to note that the operations of the absolutepoker.com and ub.com sites, now under the management of Blanca, are entirely unaffected by the events referred to by the Liquidator. Since August 2010, these sites have been, and continue to be, operated by Blanca, using proprietary software employing industry-leading security features. In short, the 2004 incident has no impact whatsoever on current players and customers of absolutepoker.com or ub.com. Blanca will continue to do everything in its power to protect its players and customers by providing the highest levels of security on its sites.
While Blanca may indeed be entirely unaware of what may (or may not) have transpired in the years before it acquired the Ultimate Bet operation, Gordon may be in for a surprise if he thinks this latest brouhaha will have no impact on the fortunes of the Cereus Network. As the chatter in poker forums reveals, for many players, the limits of endurance were reached some time ago.
