Tokwiro Enterprises ENRG, UltimateBet’s owners, have admitted the second time in less than a year that cheating has gone on in their poker room. What happened is that UltimateBet security had been breached by former employees and accounts with access to opponent’s hole cards that were used to cheat in high-stakes games. The fraudulent activity took place from March 7, 2006 to December 3, 2007.

The investigation was launched in January after the online poker room was notified that the “NioNio” account might be involved in unfair play.

In February preliminary findings indicated high winning statistics for the suspect accounts. Later on, it was confirmed that the suspected accounts were associated with the individuals who had worked for UltimateBet under the previous ownership, and the online poker site discovered the unauthorized code that allowed the perpetrators to obtain hole card information during live play. The unauthorized code was removed.

In March, six player accounts were confirmed to have participated in the fraudulent activity, and it was noticed that some account names had been changed several times. NioNio, Sleepless, NoPaddles, nvtease, flatbroke33, ilike2win, UtakeIt2, FlipFlop2, erick456, WhackMe44, RockStarLA, stoned2nite, monizzle, FireNTexas, HeadKase01, LetsPatttty, NYMobser, and WhoWhereWhen are the account names that have been used un the fraudulent activity.

Finally in May Gaming Association has certified that the software code that enabled unfair play was removed from UltimateBet servers in February of 2008. Moreover, they have identified customers affected by this incident, now, UltimateBet is able to refund them.

To note: UltimateBet customers will no longer be able to change account names unless they’ve suffered from “abuse” in the chat rooms.