PayPal Admits To Sharing Customer Info With Company Tied To UB Poker Scandal

According to PayPal's Privacy Policy, the popular payment company contracts Iovation to "retrieve risk information regarding the IP and device from which you are accessing PayPal [and] research and testing as to appropriateness of new products and services."

Iovation, for those of you unaware, has a CEO who founded Ultimate Poker, the now shuttered online poker site scarred by an internal cheating scandal that ultimately wound up being profiled on a segment of the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes".

Whether the folks behind PayPal were aware of Iovation’s skeletons, few seem to really know. PayPal bigwigs might not follow industry poker news but they certainly keep tabs on their own community forum, which now features a posted message regarding the controversy.

USPoker.com was among the first websites to note the cozy relationship between PayPal and Iovation.

And it is not the first time Iovation has developed business partnership arrangements with otherwise reputable companies.

Last March, the Station Casinos backed online poker site Ultimate Poker (not to be confused with UltimateBet) severed ties with Iovation once these past revelations came to light.

“We understand that there were concerns among some of our customers, we hope this makes our players feel more comfortable,” a short statement from Ultimate Poker read at the time.

Iovation is subcontracted through CAMS, itself a subsidiary of Verifi.

From US Poker:

Travis Makar, a former business associate of Russ Hamilton, released tapes that implicate Hamilton and Greg Pierson, among others, in a cover-up of the UltimateBet insider cheating scandal. Pierson is the CEO and co-founder of Iovation.

A documentary on the UltimateBet insider cheating titled UltimateBeat connects Iovation co-founders directly to the scandal. Scott Bell, director and creator of UltimateBeat, published a detailed outline of the tapes leaked by Makar here. These tapes were used in the UltimateBeat film.

Ultimate Poker Launches First Licensed US Online Poker Room

Ultimate Poker made online poker history minutes ago by launching the first real money online poker room ever to be licensed in the United States.

As of Tuesday, April 30th, 2013, the Ultimate Poker client can be downloaded, accounts can be created and money deposited. As of 1:50am PT, no actual games are currently being run. Real money games are expected to be introduced later this morning, reportedly at 9:00am PT.

Ultimate Poker is only available to players that are physically within the borders of Nevada at the time of play. Geo blocking technology is used to recognize login attempts outside Nevada. While other players cannot use Ultimate Poker for real money, the client is available to download and view from anywhere in the world.

Ultimate Poker is operated by a subsidiary of Station Casinos known as Fertitta Interactive. Station Casinos owns a 57.3% stake in the company. Tom Breitling was recently approved to be a 14.3% owner of the interactive division. The remainder of the company is owned by minority partners.