More non-answers from UltimateBlecch

Pokerati's California Jen has conducted an interview with Paul Leggett, the COO of Tokwiro Enterprises, which owns and operates UltimateBet and Absolute Poker. You can read her introductory remarks and get to the interview transcripts here.

Jen is quite complimentary about Mr. Leggett's accessibility and openness. Frankly, I don't see it. There may be a crumb or two of detail here that wasn't previous reported, but precious little, and nothing that I found important. It mostly strikes me as the same mind-numbing corporate PR-speak that we've gotten all along. (See my previous posts on the subject here, here, here, and here.)

For me, the most basic and central question remains, Whodunnit? Once again, everybody interested in the answer to that will be disappointed:

I cannot confirm or deny anybody that is involved or not involved at this
point. Every time I give an interview, obviously people want me to say exactly
who is the perpetrator or who is part of the investigation, and I simply can’t.
There’s nothing that would give me more personal satisfaction than to do that,
but unfortunately, our situation is very complicated.

But I have a ton of evidence – IP addresses, withdrawal information,
transfer information, addresses, names – and I’m confident in my own mind that I
know exactly what occurred. We’re involved in complicated legal action, and our
litigators have forbidden me to say anything about who is or is not involved at
this point.

I’m very hopeful that we’re going to be receiving a very large sum of money
as a result of our legal actions, something that represents some kind of justice
in this whole thing, and I’m very hopeful and committed to doing everything I
can to make sure that enough information comes out about this, whether it be
through our legal actions or whatever, to make sure that the poker community and
the public at large are satisfied at the end of this.

I wish that Jen had pressed harder on this. Not that Liggett would cough up any names no matter what she had asked, but I'd like to hear him explain exactly why he can't tell us who the culprits were. What does he fear would happen as a result of releasing that information?

One possible answer is perhaps found in a cryptic phrase in that last paragraph: "whether it be through our legal actions or whatever." It's that "whatever" that catches my attention. If the revelation of the names is to be through Tokwiro's "legal actions" seeking compensation, then it's hard to fathom any reason why revealing them now versus revealing them later in court documents makes any difference. It's not like the culprits don't already know that they've been fingered, and Tokwiro is therefore trying hard not to alert them to the investigation.

So what could that "whatever" mean? I wonder if it means that they are negotiating with the thieves for reimbursement to Tokwiro, in exchange for which their names will never be made public. (You may recall that the names of the culprits behind the Absolute Poker cheating were buried in exchange for them revealing to the company how they accomplished their misdeeds.) That would certainly explain the silence. But it would flatly contradict Leggett's assertion that he is "committed to doing everything I can" to satisfy the poker community, because no reasonable assessment of what information will satisfy the poker community could fail to include the names of the guilty.

In other words, this appears to be a statement of reassurance that "at the length truth will out," as Launcelot put it, but it is given with weasel words and loopholes; Leggett may simply later claim that the names of those involved are not part of what he defines as "enough information ... to make sure that the poker community and the public at large are satisfied." It's not hard to imagine him saying, now or later, "Uh, you don't need to know that."

Well, sir, we do need to know it, in order to find out whether the felons are still involved, in some direct or indirect way, with the company now. Your shills have claimed that there is no longer any connection, but there is considerable reason to doubt the truth of such assertions. In fact, the continued secrecy strongly fuels suspicions along those lines.

For example, suppose we were to ask Mr. Leggett whether Joe Norton, the CEO and sole owner of Tokwiro, was personally involved in the scandal. Since Mr. Leggett "cannot confirm or deny anybody that is involved or not involved," then he obviously cannot and will not deny that Mr. Norton knew about, authorized, and/or profited from the cheating. As long as that is the case, how on earth can they think that they have given even token reassurance to the poker-playing public that they have actually cleaned house?

The most nausea-inducing part of the interview, for me, was this final paragraph:

It’s our job now to do everything we can to prove to the poker community and the
world that we are open, we are transparent, we are secure, and as additional
information comes out about this investigation as it wraps up, that people are
more willing to listen to what we’re saying about security and transparency
going forward.

Oh, please! He says "we are open, we are transparent," in the same interview in which he doggedly continues to refuse to answer the single most central, basic, and nagging question about the scandal.

Does he really think we are so stupid as to believe this?



About the image above. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find tasteful images when doing a Google Image search for "vomit"? This one seemed OK to me.

Here's the information about the painting, as listed here:

Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández)
El vómito es la cultura (Vomit is Culture), 1998
Watercolor and ink on paper 121 x 91 cm. - 48 x 36"
Collection of the ASU Art Museum
Gift of the Bacardi Art Foundation, Miami