Or maybe you are just completely uninformed about the subject you are trying to debate.

Joe Dbok told the poker community he was going to ride in and swashbuckle his way to the truth and release the WHOLE truth to the community. Of course he had no power to deliver on his promises as a sponsored pro but why he is "hated on" (which is the extent you can comprehend) is because he made promises which were nothing more than excuses to join UB and collect a pay check, giving a BIG MIDDLE FINGER to the community at large.

write him a letter gull

1) Mook has been diligent in referring company PR
2) Questions taken from forums have been answered as one-offs by Leggett without followup. The HH drive failure materializing last year when Kozai's affadavit was made public has never been explained well and doesn't match with the budgets allocated to technology by John Kemp and Excapsa. They didn't use a real auditor like KPMG with public results. They never provided punitive damages. There is no methodology for players to truly compare what was stolen with what was returned. The net loss method incorrectly incorporated cheating account losses when it should have only tallied wins.

This could get real long.

Eleven,
I don't really think that answered my question. I'm wondering if there's an example of them clearly going out of their way to help those who were harmed by this or those who are investigating it (e.g. outing a cheating account that wasn't already outted).

You know what, I'm grunching and picking out this one sentence, because to me this part is TOTALLY ridiculous.

If you KNOW, if you are 100% CERTAIN, without the FAINTEST SHADOW OF A DOUBT that you are none of those things... well, then you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Because you ALREADY KNOW.

But, guess what? NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T ASSUME THESE THINGS. They double-check ALL THE TIME. They ATTEMPT TO THINK OBJECTIVELY AND RATIONALLY about their actions, and about criticisms they may get about those actions. They don't *KNOW*. And, over time, doing the best they can, with some fits and starts, they become better people.

Eh, why do I even bother. Keep rationalizing until you are blue in the face for all I care. Maybe someday you'll grow up a little.

I'm surprised I can't come up with much of anything. They extended the screenname list and the dates when the KGC report came out. Actually for a company which stole so much so openly you would think there would have been a ton of PR initiatives.

They really have been a study in how not to run a successful company in pretty much every area.

I understand that lots of people lost lots of money, but unless Joe had a hand in it personally, enough is enough. He made empty promises, but I'd like to think he had good intentions going in. Joe seems like a good guy that is just really bad with words. Props to him though for coming here. It's a no win situation Joe.

That's the thing. It's not "just" that they made this collossal "mistake" of actively covering up a multimillion dollar theft, they also seem to have totally dragged their feet at every step of the way after they were finally forced to admit that the cheating had in fact happened. Unless I'm missing something, they've showed absolutely no initiative at all to try to make things right, and all of the major information that we have about the scandal has come from sources other than official releases from the company that's sitting on all the data. As I understand it, much of it was leaked by employees of the company, but not released by the company itself until it had already been public.

That just doesn't jive at all with the picture of the company that Joe is painting.

If the need ever comes up where people want me to submit any questions, I would be more than happy to help. I will try to post more in the future, but for now I added what I could and will wait to see what happens

Rofl @ people posting and blogging about critics of Sebok and UB "probably never lost a penny" so they should just shut up. (PKRGSSP et al) WTF does that have to do with anything?

Are you saying UB should get a pass from me since they never stole MY money? I cannot believe the ignorance of some people who get PAID to write this bull****.

I will continue to hold UB's and their reps feet to the fire until the truth comes out and if you don't like it you can gtfo of the threads.

How can you keep dodging this question?

Questions for Joe

1) Why hasn't UB/Cereus sued the previous ownership. Clearly there was fraud about the state of the company and the liability debt caused by blatant fraud, damage to the reputation to the company. Clearly some kind of civil action is warranted ? Are your lawyers as incompetent as you IT department ?

2) Why was Hellmuth/Duke fired ? let go ? separated was it money ? was it to appeal to a new generation ?

Thanks for coming on, I look forward to your answers

Cereus threatened an $81M lawsuit in 2008 against the former owner of UB assets. No suit was ever filed and a settlement was reached for $15M which was supposed to be earmarked towards refunds. There is no solid evidence these funds were used to pay refunds, only the word of company spokesmen. An audit was performed by the KGC with a note included in legal documents that Gaming Associates reviewed the KGC audit and concurred. The results were not made public.

There is no evidence the company has made any attempt at all to go after money stolen from customers. They haven't pursued the criminals and they will not provide information to players/investigators as a proxy agency to go after the criminals in their stead.

After all of this, the fact is that Joe does not choose to reply to these questions because 1. He does not know the answers (although he was supposedly signed to UB to find them out) or 2. He does not choose to answer the questions due to his employment with UB.

This. It's a train wreck on how to manage a company-wide scandal of this type. Their behavior is completely opposite to what is considered best practice by companies trying to come clean. Again, they are either totally incompetent, or complicit in a cover-up (at best).

And sorry, but Joe has now linked the credibility of his name and reputation (what's left of it) with this company. The idea that he is being unfairly abused here, or that he should be thanked for actually discussing this topic in a public forum, is ludicrous. He is a representative of the company, and yet he appears totally ignorant about the one thing in which he should know all details. And he should have requested this info before signing up. He should have presented the company with a list of questions and demands pertaining to the scandal before joining, and if they were not forthcoming with answers, he should have walked. Having a conversation with the CEO who assures him everything is OK is clearly not enough.

As an adult, he has chosen to link his name and brand with UltimateBet. He did it almost certainly for money. Now he is paying the price, and deservedly so. His behavior is also a case study in how not to associate yourself with a company tainted by scandal. Short term gain (money), long term pain (total loss of credibility).

The idea he was going to get inside and figure it all out, Scooby doo like, is laughable ("We would have gotten away with it all if it wasn't for that meddling Joe!"). Especially when even today he can't seem to answer basic questions on the scandal.

Joe: If you want to save face and begin the process of building back your own reputation, I would suggest working with the most knowledgeable posters here on this scandal and preparing a list of questions/demands to the UB CEO. Give him a month to answer with the data. Don't publicize what you're doing, but tell the CEO you will walk, and will publish your list of questions/demands, after the month is up and there is no adequate reply.

Having a high profile Pro walk because they are not forthcoming on this scandal would probably be the nail in the coffin at UB. A tipping point. So they will be under pressure to cough up more info. Of course, if they are still hiding things, they will refuse, and your gravy train with UB will come to a halt. But you will be well on your way to rebuilding your own reputation within the poker world.

You're here, so clearly the pangs of guilt are tugging at you to some degree. But let's be clear: your salary is most likely being paid with stolen money. Money taken from people who post here, from former friends, from people who trusted a company you now represent. I don't believe you are a standard company shill, Joe. You were just incredibly naive. Now is the time to take a stand, and do what is right.

Help the people here get to the truth. Only you can make it happen.

If I knew a clinic, and even a small number of its providers, had committed
fraud, I would never consider working for, or with them. I do not
think I am in the minority behaving that way.
Someone in the poker field that stayed with, or even more strange, joined
UB in a business relationship, is ethically challenged.

I'd like to propose an alternate theory. One which flies in the face of conventional wisdom. We all seem to chuckle at just how incompetent their management is. What if they are actually extremely smart? What if that playbook doesn't work in cases where coming clean would reveal an extent of restitution which is simply not possible? Imagine that cheating started from day 1 but we only caught it when the cheaters got greedy. Something they only did after years of plying their trade without any hint of being caught?

If you walked up to a shady salesman and asked how much his widget costs. He responds with 'How much have you got?' You say $457 and 33 cents. 'What a coincidence!...'

Well, that's just what happened here: 'How many names have you guys got?' 'After extensive investigation, we have the exact same names!'

I'm afraid it is time to face the truth: WE are the mark. They can cheat, even get caught, use tip-of-the-iceberg funds and continue their trade. Then, get this, get caught again, rinse-repeat.

Yes, we will study this case one day: How to rewrite the playbook.

Now if only we had kept quiet on a name or two...

p.s. Oh, and 'The dog ate the hh's' makes it clear just how bright they think we are.

I know it has been said before, but I will echo the "props to Joe" for trying....

From http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...2&postcount=18
Joe,

You said above that you "know that many sites in... poker" pay people to post on sites.

Could you please identify those for us?

lol, good catch

I don't doubt it's happened but I can't recall anyone else every getting caught. You'd have to do something really ******ed, like post from your corporate offices without obfuscating your IP.

i think your giving seebok WAY too much credit in your posts,he's just another site pro at UB,THATS IT.

we were tricked into thinking he was somebody,a friend even but this obviously isn't the case.

He told us he would let all the skeletons out of the UB closet, instead he threatens to let everyone else's skeletons out.

He told us he can make miracles its right of us to ask him to prove it.

Hi Joe,

I'd be happy to help explain. Here's the thread where the shills were discovered, starting at post 23:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...posure-843900/

Here are the most pertinent posts:

Now you've said that you know of many sites that pay people to post on sites; I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to hear which sites are doing this. So far, Cereus is the only one I've actually seen doing it. I'd hate to think your post was some kind of "but the other sites are doing it too" obfuscation without any proof like Phil Hellmuth's claim that "Sometimes these things happen on the Internet".

Great post Bobo, thanks. I'm really interested to hear Leggetts response and if Joe has anything else to say on it. It does infuriate me when companies use these sorts of techniques, (and like you I can't actually name many others), especially with UB's history. It's exploiting 2+2s reputation for their monetary gain.

The cost is entirely to 2+2, a lot of confusion, scepticism around anyone debating a slightly more forgiving POV on UB, fuel in the already hot fire, less integrity and loss of reputation. How so many incompetent and scummy people get so high up in business baffles me.

Shilling should be seen as a gross insult to anyone that frequents 2+2.

Bobo Fett

1) no
2) criminal is a little harsh b/c the new UB (old AP owners are there) maybe didn't steal it but they have been trying like hell from day 1 not to refund for example; Travis Makar said he was at the meeting when NEW UB decided not to give Ben Affleck not even a penny refund b/c it would be a public embarrassment for Ben if it got out he played online and Brad Booth 250K refund when he lost 1.5 mill b/c they thought that would shut him up but it didn't work with Brad like it worked with Prahlad ldo