Update: New Info in AP-UB Scandal

More allegations in sight Another wave of allegations emerged this week in the Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker hole card cheating scandal, this time containing some accusations of extortion and intimidation. Last week was marked by claims made by one Travis Makar, that he has plenty of evidence on the scam. This was followed by an interview in which he presented the evidence collected some years ago while he was involved in the computer repair business. The evidence he provided pointed to a person called Zoltan “Brainwashdodo” Rozsa, a former Support Centre worker at AP who wanted to extort money from the CEO of the internet poker sites, Paul Leggett with evidence on the cheating the collected while he was with the company. According to Makar, Leggett first contemplated paying him off, but then decided to take the matter to the Costa Rica equivalent of the FBI. What happened in that investigation is not clear. In his blog, Leggett wrote his reaction to these allegations: "Firstly, I want to make sure everyone knows that I never made an offer to pay-off Brainwashdodo and I never did pay or instruct any payment to be made to Brainwashdodo. It is true that he tried to blackmail our company by threatening to release a bunch of confidential company information including financial records and player data. However, after unsuccessfully trying to pursue him with the help of local law enforcement, I simply told him that I was unwilling to pay anything to him. "There is no doubt that Brainwashdodo did try to extort me. I did arrange to meet him because I did not want him to post our company's data and I wanted him arrested for trying to blackmail the company. I do remember considering paying him to not release a bunch of information but after a great deal of thought, I decided it was best not to take part in the extortion and we never paid him a dime. "I saw the email copy posted online, and while I obviously do not remember every email I've sent over the past three years, I can believe that it was written by me. Another blogger has already posted that they have evidence stating that I turned down Dodo and that he got money from somewhere else: http://haleyspokerblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/just-conjecturin-volume-27-uncovering.html" On February 24, he wrote: "Today I wanted to comment on the recent interview with Travis Makar and subsequent discussions. "After I turned Dodo down, I believe he then finally realized that I didn't have any connection to the people he was really trying to extort and I never heard from him again. "I would like to make it clear that our company is truly different from Excapsa and the other companies involved in the operating of UltimateBet before 2007. I have never met or spoken with Russ Hamilton or Travis Makar or any of these people. We also worked tirelessly to get the money together (including $15 million from a settlement with Excapsa) to refund players and we have worked hard to financially punish those who we felt were responsible in anyway for players being cheated. "I also want to make it clear that we have always hoped that someone like Travis Makar would come forward one day and release information regarding whom else, in addition to Russ, was involved in the cheating. We very much want this to happen. "Regarding the claim that HH's were tampered with, we have no evidence that points to this. All of the HH's we were able to obtain in the public domain always matched the UltimateBet database exactly. However, we do believe that prior to us taking over UltimateBet that software source code records were deleted as well as other evidence. "We encourage Travis or anyone to make any data they have or opinions public. Up until this point, we've had to rely almost completely on data and we strongly encourage anyone who has any information about HH's, guilty parties in the UltimateBet scandal, or anything related, to please post all of your information for the masses to read." All the text he wrote points to his thorough research into the scandal. And in case of Hintze which he mentions in the blog, she has been investigating into the affair for years now, blogging regularly on new discoveries. At http://haleyspokerblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/just-conjecturin-volume-27-uncovering.html, Hintze writes about her latest conclusions and the Rozsa-Leggett tit-for-tat. In her recent blog post, she claims that another central figure in the scandal, Russ Hamilton, did pay a substantial sum of money to the Hungarian blackmailer. She also added that back in 2008 Leggett decided to intimidate Rozsa by hiring some 'thugs to sit in a parked car outside Rozsa's apartment', a claim confirmed by Makar. "Anyhow, knowing that the information I have is indeed legit and that the information brainwashdodo holds is also possessed by others, it's time to swing the hammer again and knock down another wall. Let's see where the rats scurry this time," Hintze concludes.