Absolute Poker has done just about everything possible to make sure the issue was resolved making sure it won’t be happening again.
Nobody involved has been punished, one still has ownership and all of the cheats have friends and family involved in day to day operations that are helping to protect these thieves that stole almost $1,000,000 from prosecution. There is certainly no guarantee these thieves are no longer involved, especially since Scott Tom almost certainly still has ownership. If anything the fact that people still promote them and play there gives them more of a reason to try to pull this off again.
Right now there isnt a more secure room online that AP and UB.
You’re kidding right? If you think either of those rooms is more secure then Poker Stars or really almost any other room then you have little if any knowledge of the industry.
Anytime you are under the public spotlight like they were you make sure and cross all your T’s.
Except for we are waiting on audit that was suppose to be finished 5 weeks ago. AP has not made any public comment in quite some time. As we know most of their public comments about this situation were misleading or outright lies.
Also AP retroactively changed bonus terms again in another bait and switch scam, one they have pulled multiple times in the past year. The latest was just a month or so ago. I suppose changing terms on existing bonuses is crossing their T’s?
If you did it wasn’t public, they were never suspended and AP made no comment on this board (or any others) except for a handful of complete lies. The fact they tried their hardest to cover this up with the help of many insiders, many of which are still involved in AP.
This shouldn’t matter. Shouldn’t you be more concerned with keeping the reputation of your site high?
Absolute is rogued/blacklisted at so many large poker portals including Pokerlistings, Bonus Whores, Casinomeister, Wizard of Odds, Pocket 5’s and 2+2 just off the top of my head. These sites are among some of the most respected in the poker/gambling in the industry. I’ve been warning people about these people for over a year when those of us at BW first considered blacklisting them for their shady ways long before thry tried to steal $1,000,000, or maybe it wasn’t, we will never know for sure how long they were stealing. These insiders were playing in games since the launch.
As an affiliate I would be concerned with the fact that AP changed terms on existing players in multiple ways. One is deducting 5% off of MGR (about 20% of your pay if you don’t pay rb) on US players for a service fee. It isn’t a deposit fee because they charge it whether your players deposit or not. They also went from dealt to contributed further lowering MGR. They didn’t just do this for new players, they did it for all players.
AP has been caught stealing almost $1,000,000, tried everything imaginable to cover it up, have not punished the thieves in any way, have stolen from affiliates and players by changing terms to their advantage, exposed important personal info about players and have yet to even release a promised audit from over a month ago.
The only people who should even be bothering to promote these guys are people that offer rakeback and could lose their pay which would piss off their players that choose to play there. Even then it should be with a warning. If you promote AP and don’t give rakeback or at least give people the full story of what happened shame on you.
If your player searches Absolute Poker after you push them on your site and sees so many rogue pages about the scandal what will your potential player think about your site? Who cares if you’re making money right?
There are few if any well known industry observers that feel AP is anywhere near mopping up this mess. By claiming all is done you’re just giving them an excuse to pull this BS again.
Can you imagine any other industry where one would send people that trust them to a place that was caught stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars? What about if the company tried to cover it up? What if the company refused to turn the thieves over to authorities even after finally being caught so red handed they couldn’t lie about it anymore? What if said thieves still owned part of the company? What if said business stated an audit would be available and over a month later had not released or even commented on the audit? Is this somewhere you would bank at? Why would you play poker there then? Why would you send your friends or customers there?
If this company will steal from their players they will steal from their affiliates too as they have already proven. If you promote these thieves you will be stolen from. They have proven this time and time and time again.
This board might be full of mostly casino affiliates that don’t understand the magnitude of the damage AP did in the online poker industry but that doesn’t mean you can come on here and outright mislead them. They know better, too many people busted them out and there is no way anyone can say they have fixed it. Thieves that get caught don’t get to say everything is OK just because they paid the money back they got caught stealing.
BTW it is almost certain AP introduced the interest for VIP Elite players just so they could pull this scam off. This scam was planned well in advance and took a software modification to pull off. This wasn’t some 1 man show.