Eight professional poker players have filed charges against Ultimate Bet and their parent company Excapsa. The group includes Dustin “Neverwin” Woolf, “Yukon” Brad Booth, Tom Koral, Daniel Ashman, Dan Smith, Greg Lavery, Dave Lizmi and Joseph Sanders and the charges were filed through the US District Court of Central California.
They allege that Excapsa Software committed fraud and grand theft by using a super-user program that allowed visual access to their opponents hole cards. The complaint goes on to further say:
Since at least June 2003 and until at least January 2008 Excapsa/Ultimate Bet did conspire to and did direct, effect, and permit the theft of over $2,000,000 held in plaintiffs’ online poker accounts at UltimateBet.com. Specifically, by creating and making use of an intentional security flaw in the UltimateBet.com software, and with the assistance of owners, agents, and employees of Excapsa and its various subsidiaries that operated UltimateBet, defendants either allowed others to or did directly view plaintiffs “hole cards” during high-stakes poker matches run at UltimateBet.com.
The group also states that Excapsa violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). That means if the courts end up ruling in their favour, they could receive up to three times the amount of damages – which totalled more then $2 million.
