Joe Sebok signed with UB about a year ago.

People flipped out, given that Sebok is Barry Greenstein's stepson, and Barry is basically known as one of the most honest and moral guys in poker. So how could a kid raised by Barry be so shortsighted and morally vacant to sign a deal with a sleazy operation like UB?

Sebok assured everyone, including the listeners of DonkDown Radio, that he put a lot of thought into the decision. He reasoned that, in addition to enriching himself with endorsement money, he can use the position to put pressure on UB to finally make things right with the victims of the scandal. On the surface, it sounded very reasonable. Joe had a good reputation, and it seemed that perhaps this was the only way for the affected players to get fairness and closure. Maybe it would be a win-win for everyone. I still bristled at the thought of a good guy like Joe shilling for UB -- even if the result was more openness and transparency. After all, why should anyone promote UB after what they did? UB doesn't deserve to be in business at this point, even if they finally did come clean with everything.

But still, at least the situation had potential. When Joe guested on our radio show last year, Micon and I treated him respectfully, but privately we had our doubts. We honestly believed that Joe wanted to help, but we doubted his ability to do so. This was no slam on Joe. We just couldn't believe that anyone, except perhaps a huge shareholder like Phil Hellmuth, would have the power or influence to set UB on the right track. It seemed that Joe bit off more than he could chew. Still, we gave it time, and gave him a chance.

One year has passed. Joe seems quite proud of himself, and generally feels that he accomplished what he set out to do. I feel quite differently.

Here is Joe's blog about the matter:

http://www.pokerroad.com/blog/joesebok/125




Summary of my response to the above:






My more detailed response will follow shortly.

He always comes off like a happy-go-lucky clown without a backbone who has reaped the benefits of his father's hard work. Calling him two-faced is extremely justifiable. When he signed with UB he only had his well-being in mind. I really doubt he put much effort at all into this "investigation". Fuck Joe Sebok.

Druff is god.

Druff is 1000% right on this one.

In fact, I'll go even further.

On a thread discussing an external analysis of several million hands played on the Cake network in light of their "encryption-less" software scandal on 2+2, I opined that analyzing hand histories is nice, but only the kind of thing that identifies the "symptoms" of the real issue at hand - that an actual vulnerability exists in the software system used by the site.

To my great surprise, the 2+2 folks dismissed my comments out of hand as out of scope.

I could not possibly disagree more. I am at a point, having done some research of my own of both the Cereus and Cake client software, that I am convinced that no poker site can truly be considered "safe" absent a full code review of their client and server software.

My specific 2+2 comments referenced above:



I'm almost starting to wonder if it's time to form a group of individuals in the poker community who also have legitimate software development/test/auditing experience and establish an independent organization seeking to do just this.

Most of the findings have been discovered by 2+2 users as opposed to Joe's thorough investigation which in itself has proved to be an oxymoron.

This reeks of trying to urge people to forget about this and move on and unfortunately based on the last few weeks with no significent updates it appears to be working.

I can only hope that people DO NOT forget about this and even if no new content is released then people can still cause disruption or keep this in the public eye and subsequent agenda.

Druff/ Micon : What are the odds on getting Joe to appear on DD Radio again to offer an explanation as to why he feels his work his done ?

I also honestly think it's about time that people like Hellmuth and Duke started to speak out but im not naive enough to realise this will never happen.

I'm sure Barry is very proud !!!!!

I had to go out for a bit, so I had to break my post up into two parts. That's okay, because it would have been really long and people would have been less likely to read it.

Anyway, here is my reaction to Sebok's blog:

There's so much to say in response to this ridiculous essay of his, I don't know where to begin.

I suppose the best place to start would be his list of goals (and subsequent accomplishments).


Completion by omission?

Joe Sebok's Goal #1 was to "get the account names involved in the super-user scandal released." He claims to have "accomplished that fairly quickly." Not so fast.

We don't necessarily have all the names of the superuser accounts on UB. We just have what UB claims to be the entire list of superusers on UB. Why should we believe them at this point? They already tried to present us in the past with shorter lists of names, claiming that they were complete. Only when sharp statistical analysts from 2+2 brought up other superuser accounts missing from the list did they suddenly unearth more superuser names. How could they have possibly missed all of the names in the first place, given all the tools they had to identify them on the back end?

When we had investigative reporter Hayley Hintze on our radio show, she told us that "the UB hand histories aren't likely to reveal anything. It's what's not in the hand histories that will be revealing." I assume that Hayley meant that UB wasn't providing any hand histories that would show anything contradicting their current list of superusers or refund calculations. That is, there's a good chance that our "complete hand histories" aren't so complete after all, and in fact omit hands where the yet-to-be-discovered superusers are participating.

Of course, this is just a theory. However, we cannot assume UB's list of superusers is correct until a truly independent third party examines the data and verifies it. Obviously we cannot take UB's word for anything at this point.

Therefore, while Joe perhaps facilitated the release of additional superuser names, we do not know if that list is complete. His goal #1 has NOT been accomplished yet.

Now let's move onto Sebok's next goal...



The dog ate my hand histories

Sebok's Goal #2 was to "get all the hand histories out to those who requested them during the cheating scandal." He proudly trumpets the fact that "I believe that we have gotten out upwards of 90% of old hand histories back to people who have requested them."

Say what?

Getting 90% of requested UB hand histories would be impressive in the time span of, say, 2 weeks. It's been over 2 1/2 years since people started requesting their hand histories, and a full year since Joe appointed himself as liaison for the process. So how is there any excuse for anything but 100% of all requested hand histories being furnished?

You've all heard the story of the kid who didn't do his homework telling the teacher that "the dog ate it." It seems that the same homework-hungry canine has made it over to Costa Rica, and has been eating the backup tapes of UB hand histories.

The weak excuse we're actually getting from Joe about the situation is as follows:



You're right, Joe. It does create a picture that suggests UB may be hiding something.

Look, while "data issues" due to "migrating servers" might fool the computer illiterate folks, it comes off as complete hogwash to anyone with an IT background. The hand history data either exists, or it doesn't. If it didn't exist at all, the hand histories would have been completely unavailable, much like the "lost" hand histories of Mark Seif's heads-up match on AP versus reggiman. There's no way that 90% of the hand history data was stored in one place, while the other 10% was stored in another. And if that was the case, it would be grouped by date, meaning that all users would still get hand histories -- just certain periods of time would be missing. There is no logical explanation as to why certain people's hand histories should be missing by this point.

Furthermore, what exactly is the holdup? How could it be taking 2 1/2 years (or even a year) to go through every backup and search for hand histories? This is not a time consuming process at all, and could easily be completed within days, rather than years.

I can only surmise one reason as to why these hand histories are taking so long.

UB needs to carefully examine each one to make sure they don't contain anything that will unearth yet-to-be-discovered superusers and/or unpaid refunds.

Perhaps the missing 10% of requested hand histories contain too much contradictory data, and UB is afraid to release them. For example, if John Smith played 60% of his hands against not-yet-revealed superusers, UB has a big problem on their hands. If they omit 60% of John's hands, he might notice large gaps of time missing and raise an issue. If they don't omit those 60% of hands, new superusers will be discovered, and millions of dollars of additional refunds will be due.

Basically, UB has refunded everything they're going to give. They have to be very careful at this point to avoid being on the hook for more, which is probably why the hand histories are being provided so slowly.

If UB had nothing to hide, they could almost instantly process and e-mail all hand history data to all affected users. It should never take months or years. It shouldn't even take weeks. They could do this in a matter of days. In fact, a fairly simple automated program could be written to do just that. UB likely is not doing this because they are still covering things up.

In any case, no matter what UB CEO Paul Leggett writes in his blog, there is nothing he could say to legitimately explain why certain people haven't received their hand histories yet. Providing someone hand histories 2 1/2 years after they ask for them is like the police first examining a crime scene 2 1/2 years after it first occurred. Too much time has passed. The evidence is likely tainted. The fact that UB still hasn't provided all hand histories is extremely disturbing.

I like Joe's excuse of, "However, I live and work in LA, not Costa Rica, so in all honesty I can only do so much to move things along there."

Yes, Joe, there is something you can do. You can threaten to quit your endorsement of UB if they don't provide the hand histories as promised. This "I'm in LA, not Costa Rica" excuse is preposterous.

I think I'd rather hear that the dog ate the backups.

Onto Joe's next crowning achievement...



Will the real superusers please stand up... please stand up...

Joe Sebok's Goal #3 was to "attempt to get out the physical names of the actual cheaters, and those who helped them cheat, released to the public."

This was perhaps the most important goal. If we can't convict these scumbags in a court of law, at least let the world know who they are and exactly what they did.

Russ Hamilton hasn't gotten what he deserved, but at least everyone knows that he cheated people out of tens of millions of dollars, and his name is mud wherever he goes. He also must fear for his safety to some degree. If he can't be in prison, at least he's suffering somewhat.

Unfortunately, at least 32 other people -- perhaps even more -- have basically gotten off scot-free.

Joe goes on to tell a tale of cooperation with forum user "Mookman" and the Wicked Chops Poker site, and how everyone banded together to release the names of the other guilty parties.

But it isn't that simple, and the picture Joe paints is quite inaccurate.

Wicked Chops and Mookman indeed did a fantastic job with exposing many guilty parties and turning a lot of confusing data into a reasonable theory of events. Now people like Travis and Rebecca Makar have also been definitively tied to the cheating, and the public scorn (and whatever else) can begin.

But how much was Joe's part in all of this? How much was UB's?

While the sources are not named in the Wicked Chops article, it seems that most of the information was obtained through disgruntled former UB employees and other moles within (or with close ties to) the organization. The Wicked Chops piece is not a cooperative venture between reporters and the current "honest" management of UB. Instead, it seems to be the product of a lot of underground investigative work.

So what exactly did Joe do here? How has UB helped with the process? Even Joe himself seems to admit that the "sources of intelligence" were Mookman and Wicked Chops.

Are you kidding me?!

Joe, records within the UB office can shed more light on this matter than Mookman or Wicked Chops ever could. Those guys are outsiders putting countless hours into cracking a bit of a view into the inside. You work for the guys on the inside -- people like Paul Leggett -- who could open up everything and give us full transparency once and for all. Why hasn't this happened?

Do you understand how ridiculous this sounds? You're telling us that you facilitated exposing Hamilton's accomplices not by going to the direct source where you work, but rather by asking outsiders with just a few pieces of the whole puzzle.

Unbelievable.

Again, why not simply demand to Paul Leggett that they release every bit of possible data related to the superuser accounts? I'm not talking about the fake names and addresses, but rather a complete list of transfers in and out, cashout data, and the name of UB employees who facilitated them.

Oh, I know why you don't demand that. Because UB would absolutely never agree to such a thing, and then you'd be forced to either quit UB (and give up all that money) or look like you didn't keep your promise to the poker community regarding quitting if such a thing happened.

Also, please spare us the claim of "legal reasons" regarding releasing information on these cheaters. UB could easily release a list of facts (names associated with the accounts, transfers in and out, recipients of cashouts, etc.) without drawing any conclusions or slandering anyone. The court of public opinion could be left to decide what really happened, and what each person's role really was. It would be pretty easy to deconstruct if we had all the data.

So after giving us his list of "accomplishments", Joe sheepishly admits that he fell a bit short, but supposedly did all he could...



Let's raise up our glasses against evil forces! Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!

Joe Sebok wants you to know that he wishes that more could have been done, but that we have to accept our limitations:



As much as possible?!

As much as possible?!



How is it "as much as possible" when a lot of people STILL don't have their hand histories, 2 1/2 years after requesting them?

How is it "as much as possible" if UB still isn't being transparent about anything? Why haven't they invited an unaffiliated third party to visit their servers in Costa Rica with full access to all data (and hand histories) from the cheating time period?

How is it "as much as possible" if UB has made zero effort to report the guilty to any form of law enforcement?

How is it "as much as possible" if shady actions and excuses still persist to this day?

How is it "as much as possible" if absolutely zero compensation has been given to the victims of this scandal, other than supposedly refunding what was stolen?

And that last part is what really pisses me off.

When you steal from someone, simply returning what you stole (only once caught) doesn't make the situation right. That's only the first half of it.

The second half involves compensating the victim for what you put them through, or for other damages they suffered as a result of your actions.

UB has not done this. They don't plan to do it. They don't feel that the victims deserve such a thing.

This was no small matter!

Bankrolls were demolished. Confidence in play styles were shattered. Emotional breakdowns and depression occurred. I would even go as far to believe that marriages were ruined and relationships with family and friends were strained.

If someone had their entire poker bankroll of 100k stolen by UB in 2005, think of how much that probably ended up costing them by the lack of ability to play in great games after that.

Imagine the depression and perhaps even suicidal feelings people suffered when they watched large sums of money disappear from their net worth, despite the fact that they were playing a style that had served them so well in the past.

Imagine how many days, months, and years were ruined by the greedy and shameful actions of Russ Hamilton and friends.

Remember -- these people thought they were losing in honest games. They didn't know they were being cheated. They had to live with the guilt and feelings of failure from what they thought was underestimating seemingly easy opponents. Many had to watch the high limit games pass them by in subsequent years, blaming themselves for squandering their bankroll that could have allowed them to participate and get a piece of the pie.

Instead, they were drawing dead. They trusted UB, and UB brazenly stole from them.

You hear all the time about the big winners in poker, but how often do you hear about the losers?

People who lose in poker tend to just fade away into oblivion. You don't even think about them until you occasionally stop to recall, "Oh yeah.. what ever happened to so-and-so?"

There were a lot of those so-and-so ruined by UB. Simply giving them back 120k in 2008, years after you initially stole the money, is nowhere near enough. Many of them began a tilt-infused shame spiral that had its genesis in the days of playing against UB superusers.

What about those people, Joe?

When is UB going to compensate its victims?

Until that happens, and until they truly become transparent with what went down, please stop with the "it's time to move forward" garbage. It isn't time to move forward. They haven't cleaned up the mess they made behind us yet.

Joe Sebok was in a tough spot last year. He found that a UB sponsorship was far more lucrative than what was being offered by other sites, and there's a good chance he needed the money. At the same time, he knew his otherwise good reputation was on the line, and to a lesser degree, so was his step-father's.

Aside from turning down the big money, which is a tough thing to do when you need it and it's being waved in front of your face, Joe Sebok did the only thing he could do. He spun the situation as one that he could use to help benefit all of UB's victims. It seemed like a good plan, but it was one that was likely destined to fail.

In reality, Joe Sebok has accomplished very little on behalf of those cheated by UB. Even worse, he is essentially throwing up his hands and giving up, letting us know that he "did all he could."

That's not true, Joe.

There's one more thing you can do:

Tell UB to become fully transparent and to compensate its victims. If they refuse, walk away and let everyone know publicly why you're leaving.

We all know the chances of that happening.

It's the same chance that the dog really ate that kid's homework.

Ya I'll mention my timeline again

few years back I run up 10k from playing 15-30 on FTP and then 25-50 on AP

I lost all of my money in a 25-50 6 max game on AP in a very short span of time. I felt something was wrong with that session before we even knew there was cheating going on and I never set foot on that site again

We find out that superusers existed. I ask for my Hand Histories. They tell me I will get them soon. Nothing happens for years and they start to ignore my emails.

I then get ahold of Seboks email around new years and email him and ask him if he can help me he says SURE NO PROBLEM I AM JUST TRYING TO MAKE EVERYTHING GO AS SMOOTH AS POSSIBLE AND I WILL FORWARD THIS TO THE APPROPRIATE PARTY AND YOU WILL HAVE THEM VERY SOON

I have emailed them every 2 months since January and they won't tell me what is taking so long and they just keep telling me to be patient that this process can take a long time and I will be receiving them soon

FUCK JOE SEBOK AND FUCK AP AND UB

Funny thing is I even told them I play 100's of 1000's of hands every year and may go back there to play and they still can't get me my Hand Histories.

:tightbusinessmodelyoufuckingthieves

This is like the Lost series finale. Too many questions left unanswered, too many things don't add up, and we're all sitting here wondering "That's it?".

Joe Sebok is a joke.

Excellent thread! I hope more people that are "in the know" will step up and give some more details on exactly what happened, or at the very least, continue to pressure UB to open the books up even more.

Kudos to addressing what the cheating did to peoples mindsets. I believe that damaged players exponentially more than the actual dollar amounts of the losses.

Because you generally have zero clue.




So you arent going to use Adobe products because they arent open source? Your rights to an opinion the subject of digital security are revoked, sir.





No. You dont get to shoulder-surf the inner workings of a financial site, you dont get to "audit" their code base, you dont get to see server logs.



The time it took me to dismantle this simple minded faggotry was worth far more than $0.02.



God *damned* youre stupid.

one of the best poker reads ever, besides One of a Kind: the rise and fall of stu ungar

Sebok lied. People died.

Very well said Druff, I have more to add but have been really busy...

I'm working on a cool story for DonkDown and today is Detox Poker main event, tomorrow Curling!

Sonatine - Paradise poker agreed to an (may not have been the best choice, but they were "big 5" at the time) Arthur Andersen internal audit of their software, at least the RNG, somewhere around 2001 I beleive...

so there is not only precedent but if the Nevada Gaming commission ever is to oversee "Bellagio online poker room" you'd bet your ass they will go over every inch of code.... something that would have certainly turned up the super-user back door long before it was a $20M+ scam.

I think the poker community has got all the info they will get out of UB and even if they were to fabricate a story up now whose going to believe it?

The bottom line is their reputation is somewhat tarnished by regular players and followers of poker media online but unfortunately they can still keep advertising on TV allowing their site to get new players who are clueless about their past shenanigans which sucks but TV stations don't care as they are all about that advertising money over integrity which is why their are so many infomercial make money schemes that come up all the time on late night television.

Druff its not like the guy bought the fucking site what do you want him to do move water...I expect you guys to be nice to everyone thats is above you in the poker community on the radio show so don't make the point lame goofy fuck.

Hello there.

Joe Sebok is receiving money from a company that stole millions of dollars from its customers. This company claims that all users have been reimbursed what was stolen from them. However, they are also refusing to provide the data that would prove this, the hand histories. There is only one logical conclusion, and that is that more money was stolen than they have admitted to, and obviously this is in their financial interest to hide any evidence of.

Now, back to Joe Sebok. When Joe signed with UB, many in the poker community were outraged. This was because this move was seen as "selling out", taking money from a company known to cheat customers. Joe's only "out" was claiming that he signed on with UB with the stipulation that part of his mission was to further the cheating investigation and make more of the findings public.

Everyone knew this was going to go nowhere, because the nameless crooks behind the scenes of UB weren't just going to plop the evidence in front of Joe and tell him to have at it. They've likely long since destroyed as much of it as the could, and spun the magnitude of the cheating enough to where it appears plausible that they have made some sort of full disclosure, when in reality, it is highly likely that what is publically known about the scandal is only a small part of the entire story.

So now Joe declares that his investigation is over, he's done all he can, when in reality, he's done next to nothing.

If you want to be nice to Joe Sebok, be my guest. But if I ever meet him in person I'll make it a point to not shake his hand.

ANYONE KNOW HOW MUCH SEBOK MAKES FOR BEING A UB WHORE?

HE ISNT EXACTLY A REALLY WELL KNOWN PLAYER

It's sad and pitiful to see someone sell out. Seebok continues to lie to the world just to line his pockets. I wouldn't give him the time of day.

At this point I agree getting the HH's may or may not find additional cheating. It is not like the players are pooling together HH's like they did when the scandal broke. I also wanted to mention that the HH's that UB has sent out, to the best of my knowledge, are not a players complete lifetime HH's. They are just the hand-picked HH's players had played against the named cheating accounts. I will try to show how this entire HH process took place from when Joe first signed with UB until now. As DanDruff mentioned, the players have been asking for HH's on UB for over 2 years. The UB scandal first started to break in early January 2008, and players all emailed UB for HH's and received little to nothing.

This got kind of long, sorry. I may have missed a few blogs or interviews, but here is how the HH process played out once Joe signed with UB. The process in which the HH's were then released as well as what hands were released seems strange. I am sill confused about a certain report that was in the court settlement. I do not know if Paul's responses or explanations about the report hold water or not. I do not know anything about databases or computer stuff, but I pulled some quotes directly from the report. Compare those to what Paul is saying. Does this make sense? Or am I just not understanding something?

Joe's Blog on 9-24-2009



Joe's Blog on 10-7-2009



Shortly after this blog Paul Leggett was a guest on Pokerroad Radio in October 2009. Users submitted questions to Paul, some of my questions were asked. A post I made on 10-13-2008 as a Follow-up to Paul's Interview

About 53 minutes in the episode: The interview Transcribed:

Q: PokerRoad (via Mookman) - There was a settlement almost a year ago, in which Uri Kozai, Excaspa Shareholder/Founder of Real Time Edge, calculated refunds for the settlement. Why couldn't the data he used, be given to the players? Surely it was complete. The amount of time the HH's taken seems like UB is unwilling to give them up. Overall, can you explain why this took so long? Please do not say a lot of data to go over, as a year ago, these "spreadsheets could have been available due to the settlement.

A: Paul Leggett - Uri Kozai did an analysis for Excapsa to confirm how much money they believed at that time was involved in the cheating basically to review the situation, because we were in a legal battle. They needed somebody that they thought was independent from their perspective, only Excapsas not from anybody else. They wanted somebody that they were confident into going and taking a look to confirm the cheating amounted to roughly how much money, so they could agree to a settlement. They didn’t really just take our word for it, that is was $22 Million dollars. They wanted somebody to confirm it. So that’s not our analysis. They didn’t spend a ton of time doing that analysis either, really it was confirming what we were saying, so I don’t think that that report could be very useful to the players.

Q: PokerRoad - Ok. So it was not a complete report. It was really just trying to confirm roughly how much the money was, so your company could get it back from the old company.

A: Paul Legett - It was part of the settlement they wanted to make sure that they were, to do enough due diligence for their shareholder. That they had somebody independent from their perspective, to go and take a look at it. To confirm roughly how much this scandal totaled to.

Here is a link to the Report, it starts on about page 146. I have tried to include what I can from the report that I thought was important.
http://wsbg.com/liquidation/Supplementa ... 202008.PDF

Here are some things taken directly from the Report that I found interesting. These are statements from RTE and Uri Kozai
















Compare the answer Paul gave on the radio show versus the report. Now compare to a Blog Paul Leggett put out much later in 2010. Leggett Blog May 2010



At the start of the blog he mentions more on the HH problem.



Lastly. slightly out of order was a blog by Joe. Joe's Blog Feb. 2010



So UB the wrote a special script to retrieve selective hands? If that is true, couldn't they have just used a script to pull each players HH's from a database? Not special hands vs. cheaters, but every hand? I hope this post is a good summary of how UB has decided to handle the HH situation. Paul Leggett will be blogging soon about the data issues. Am I wrong in thinking that from the report, that all the data was there to be used? I hope someone can help me figure this out.