I was writing a blog post about Ultimatebet.com now forwarding away from UB.com and to a domain depositbonus.com. When I was checking this site I noticed that a lot of the content looked familiar. I used to work at Bonuswhores.com, which is now Pokerbonuses.com. I started copying and pasting content into Google and sure enough their content matched word for word. For example:

http://www.depositbonus.com/cake-poker-review/

"In addition to the sign-up bonus, players will also receive 33% rakeback through PokerBonuses."

They didn't even change "PokerBonuses" to their own site. You will see the exact line here:

http://www.pokerbonuses.com/cake-poker

In fact the entire page is almost word for word.

Note their reload bonus feed is exactly the same:

http://www.depositbonus.com/updated-bonuses/

http://www.pokerbonuses.com/bonusfeed.php

Also note they didn't bother to even use their own bonus codes:

http://www.depositbonus.com/sign-up-bonuses-for-the-us/

http://www.pokerbonuses.com/

In a hurry this site was thrown together for one reason or another. I'm not going to speculate why. They did almost a complete copy/paste of Pokerbonuses.com. I know for a fact they did not have consent. Using duplicate content, especially without using your own bonus codes in completely pointless unless one just wanted to capitalize off of the traffic being pointed to that domain using your own links. Note neither AP or UB are promoted there even though Ultimatebet.com forwards to it.

The site has been notified and changes are already being made but what are they up to? I have a bunch of screenshots as well in case it changes and there are any questions later.

heh.

yet another reminder you shouldn't play at Cereus network

Hello all,

As a representative of the company that owns PokerBonuses.com (formerly BonusWhores.com), I'm simply posting to confirm that we are not in any way associated with this website. Ever since we saw their duplicate content earlier today, we've been working nonstop to ensure that it is taken down. That appears to be happening now...

http://www.ip-adress.com/reverse_ip/66.212.244.162

This site is also hosted on Cereus servers apparently:
http://trustservicesltd.com/

Funny name for a business considering they are incredibly corrupt One to avoid I guess.

Lots of other bonus domains that take you straight to UB.com

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-i...positbonus.com
100kprobounty.com
21bet.biz
21bet.cc

Over 1,000 more apparently lol

Yet ub.com still goes to the poker site. Before long, you won't even remember that the current UB use to be that shady insider cheating hack site UltimateBet just like you don't remember Accenture use to be Andersen Consulting part of Enron cronies Arthur Andersen. I just commented to somebody today that there are over 1000 domains belonging to Cereus which all point to the primary cereus IP address. From there, they are steered to various sites; many of them currently to depositbonus.com. Couple examples below:

classicub.net
oldschoolpoker.net

edit: I was using Robtex the other day and there were only a couple hundred. Seems like they might be in the process of buying up a bunch of domain names for whatever plan they are cooking up. BTW, Trust Services seems to be the arm which is currently overseeing fraud monitoring. Nolan Bolusan works for Trust Services in his role as fraud monitor. His Linked In page used to say:

Costa Rica - Fraud & Risk Manager at Trust Services Ltd June 2007 - Present ( 3 years )
Previous
•Security Analyst Supervisor at MultiPlay May 2004 - June 2007 ( 3 years 2 months )

MultiPlay was another sub company used by UltimateBet/Excapsa. He wiped his page when his name was outed here before.

The depositbonus.com/pokerbonuses.com/Bonuswhores.com duplicate content/codes is curious, but nowhere near as interesting as ...

How TF did UltimateBet/UB allow Ultimatebet.com to be forwarded to anywhere but UB.com????

So what does this mean? Ultimatebet no longer exists? They just disappeared from the face of the Earth? Or did they get hacked? I'm confused.

UB is still around, it appears they're just ditching the Ultimate Bet brand.

Check the content on this page xxhttp://www.depositbonus.com/become-an-online-poker-affiliate/

That appears to be ripped from http://www.onlinepokeraffiliate.org/

LOL Cereusly

Wow that is one of the weirdest redirects I have ever seen.
I don't get the benefit to UltimateBet as the site promos several poker
sites other than UB. Then I can't imagine Cereus letting go of the www.ultimatebet.com.
So is it them. Is it a rogue? Did they let the url go? So weird.

Maybe more research is needed. whois etc...

I mean this really is crazy and the content theft is one of the worst things
possible on the www.
Content theft really pisses me off.

From twitter.com/UB:

The WHOIS for ultimatebet.com:

This is very weird. If there company is just "UB" now what will that stand for? Nothing? Whaa? Interesting.

Wow. They are going to be getting a ton of hits too.
Any link on the many poker websites and afiliate websites on the web not
changed from www.ultimatebet.com to www.ub.com will likely go there.

Great redirect for someone. But who the hell is it?
They have this redirect which could mean loads of cash and they can't even
afford thier own content writers. This whole thing is sick and somewhat facinating at the same time.

PS: I hope some of the great 2p2 researchers have a look at this.

PA can u PM your blog name.

It looks like they removed all of the scraped content they took off of Pokerbonuses.com. Now it is content taken off of other sites. Maybe they got permission, maybe they own the other sites as well although the whois doesn't show that is the case.

http://www.depositbonus.com/full-tilt-poker-review/

http://saltydogpoker.com/pb/wp_e2fa2..._e2fa2f57.html

Those pages both have the same content.

http://www.depositbonus.com/cake-poker-review/

http://www.pokercritic.com/review.php?rid=57

Those aren't the only ones. Instead of scraping one site's entire content it looks like they took a page from several different site's content. Of course maybe they got permission or they own these other sites. If that is the case one has to wonder why they scraped content the first time around though.

I guess this answers my previous question. Blanca Games should have acquired ultimatebet.com (and common misspellings thereof) as part of their deal. The fact that they apparently didn't, doesn't bode well for them resurrecting the reputation of UB/AP. (Not that the two things are related, but if they're not competent enough to preserve a long established trade name, whats the chances of them doing the right thing?)

When Blast Off and Excapsa settled the claim, one of the contingents was 375k for an undivided interest in the software back to Excapsa. In the verbiage was this:

"In this Assignment; (i) the term “Software” means the online gaming software indirectly transferred by way of the sale of the shares of GTHL by the Seller to the Buyer pursuant to the Sale Documents and now owned by the Assignor and currently used at the domain names Ultimatebet.com, Ultimateblackjack.com and Ultimatepoker.com (the “Websites”)"

Why the URLs are pointing at a poorly done and somewhat hostile affiliate page is unclear though.

also in that Assignment agreement, the Assignor is Game Theory Ltd as expected, but the Assignee is whited out. It does say it is a corporation established in the British Virgin Islands though. This agreement was done in Oct/2008.

Ultimate Burglars.

Blanca Games didn't even buy their .net or anything similar like blancagame.com. I blogged about that Friday and not long after someone else scooped them up. They also only registered their domain for 1 year.

When I launched my online poker business in 2004 I knew very little about internet marketing but I knew to register my domains for a long time and buy anything similar. I don't know what to read into the fact this group didn't do that.

I'm surprised they aren't pointing to spotlightpoker.com but then maybe spotlight isn't ready to handle the traffic...

Here is a little more about the software transfer which included the domain ultimatebet.com.

"Shareholders will recall that Excapsa (through its subsidiary, Aspacxe Holdings, Inc. (“Aspacxe”) acquired an ownership interest in all of the gaming software in November 2008. Since that time, Aspacxe has been working closely with RealTime Edge Software Inc. (“RTE”), a Toronto-based software development and maintenance company, on commercial opportunities to exploit the software. RTE is run by Mr. Uri Kozai who was VP of Development for Excapsa at the time of the sale in October 2006.

In order to be in a position to market the blackjack software, it was necessary to obtain a license for the “Elimination Blackjack” game rules developed by Centaurus Games (previously Ultimate Blackjack Tour). Earlier this year, Aspacxe obtained this license from Centaurus Games on a perpetual and royalty-free basis."

The last part is Russ Hamilton; at least in terms of royalties. Whether he gave up the rights under duress or for money is not part of the documents. Russ holds the patent on the game AFAIK, though the company is run by his friends and I believe Carolyn Heick worked there for a while; maybe still does.

ElevenGrover,

This is hallacomplicated, and I'm probably way behind, but would a reasonable explanation be that the people that sold to Blanca Games knew that they couldn't sell "UlitmateBet.com", so they did their best to change the "brand" and internet address to UB.com to transfer value from what they could not sell ("UlitmateBet.com") to what they could ("UB.com")?

(Sorry if I'm so far behind that this is either completely wrong or completely obvious, or anything in between equally wrong)

How in the world can they ditch the Ultimate Bet "brand" when UB stands for ...........................you guessed it Ultimate Bet?

This was the impression I got, but to be honest I didn't spend a long time trying to figure it all out.