Television viewers in the United States will get another helping of the UltimateBet scandal from Tuesday October 22, when Doublehead Pictures releases its in-depth documentary “UltimateBeat” in Video on Demand format.
Our readers may recall that director Scott Bell had to go the crowd funding route via Kickstarter.com to get his production off the ground.
Bell is promoting the production through Youtube and social and poker channels, and the imminent release has already created a fair amount of interest.
Doublehead’s advance publicity material claims that UltimateBeat tracks an intersection of old school hustlers and technology during the ‘poker boom.’
“After successfully launching a popular [online poker] site, a group of insiders used software access to defraud players over a period of years without detection. When discovered, they went to great lengths to cover-up the crimes in order to repay less than the amount stolen,” the statement claims.
“Nobody was ever investigated, arrested, indicted or prosecuted for the crimes. The subtext is how a small group of players crowd-sourced an online investigation to force UltimateBet into repaying far more than they intended, if not fully.”
The doccie features interviews with leading players who would not give up on their attempts to expose the scandal and achieve redress like Mike Fosco, Brad Booth, Michael Josem, Mason Malmuth of twoplustwo, and Todd Witteles.
Bell claims: “The guys who ran UltimateBet could not have succeeded at this without some level of player and poker media acquiescence during the boom years. That general sense of ‘don’t rock the boat because we are all making a lot of money’ thing.
“Working on this case is a story unto itself with a lot of ups/downs and weird twists. One example is the lawyer for Pierson, et al sending a young intern down to help us out last year on a Vegas shoot. I mean, spies. C’mon.”
With investigative journalist Haley Hintze reportedly due to release a book on her exhaustive enquiries into the Absolute Poker and UltimateBet affairs, it appears likely that we have still not heard the last of online poker’s biggest cheating scandal…and those who perpetrated it.
Catch the promotional vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRDEjnCXC4