AP Visit: I'm going to Costa Rica

[h11]

[ QUOTE ]
Gilda Patricia Cortes Chinchilla = Scott Tom's wife
Laura Chinchilla = Vice Presidente of Costa Rica

Hmmmm.

Although I'm sure that Chinchilla is a pretty common name in South America.

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Formerly Minister of Public Security, Interior and Police. I don't know how to do photos but here is a url for a photo
http://gppi.georgetown.edu/14406.html

[JLaw]

The one general area that I'd like to hear more about is if/how AP can establish the independence of its security team. Fundamentally, if the security team is under the thumb of upper management, then the security team is ripe for being compromised. Move along, nothing to see here guys....

In addition, the security team needs the ability to communicate with customers independent of the corporate management structure. Otherwise it's impossible for the security team to accurately report their findings.

Additionally, I'd like to hear more about the qualifications of the security team -- it's hard to know if we should have any confidence in their ability to detect these kinds of problems in the future. We don't know if they found the problem and were unable to communicate due to pressure from upper management, or if they were so incompetent as to miss the obvious cheating and chip dumping.

I think I saw it mentioned earlier, but what are company policies regarding playing in their own rooms? ISTM that it's fundamentally a bad idea and a great temptation to cheat if an employee/consultant/executive can play in their own room. It should be simply prohibited and grounds for immediate dismissal.

Finally, how can we get more transparency in the future. We can not expect to be so fortunate as to get the master hand history data in the future. Without that information it I think it would have been much harder to unravel this mess to the point there AP could no longer cover it up.

As for the clowns objecting to you taking a fee for your trip, ignore them. They're clueless. I absolutely trust you to report on what you find regardless of the compensation.

Jeff

[ikestoys]

Oh and Nat-

I think the concerns for your safety are based off of growing up on bad movies, not reality.

[pokerstudAA]

[ QUOTE ]
Gilda Patricia Cortes Chinchilla = Scott Tom's wife
Laura Chinchilla = Vice Presidente of Costa Rica

Hmmmm.

Although I'm sure that Chinchilla is a pretty common name in South America.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting....

Costa Rica seems about as crooked as those Mohawks running the KGC.

[ QUOTE ]
Costa Rica has no law that regulates the sports betting industry, Mrs. Chinchilla said, therefore the government doesn't have legal means to intervene and assist the DoJ. Sports betting is not illegal in Costa Rica. The Tico government imposes an annual tax on the over 750 sports books located in the country, a number of which operat without paying the tax.

The Costa Rican OIJ (Organization of Judicial Investigation) Director Mr. Jorge Rojas said that his department ran several investigations for money laundering allegations related to the sports betting industry in the past years. “Our investigations never found evidence of these alleged crimes”, he said.

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[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh and Nat-

I think the concerns for your safety are based off of growing up on bad movies, not reality.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think there is any reason to think he will be unsafe, that just doesn't make any sense. Now if he is married or something I could see an outside chance of some pictures of him in a compromised position being taken, but to fly someone down there to rough them up or something is beyond stupid. What would be the point?

[mntbikr15]

Nat,

Dead on Impact(Ptowner on AP?) posted his convo with a VIP rep in the other thread.

The standout of which was that AP is ONLY AUDITING A THREE WEEK TIMEFRAME!

Please get some answers on this.

[LuckyMux]

Nat,

The more I think about this, the more I don't think you should go alone. Although I completely trust both your integrity and intelligence, two things are really bugging me.

The main one: AP actually wants you to visit them. Why?

The second was your statement about how 'nobody is talking on the record'. Why not? Who will punish them now the 'bad guys' have supposedly gone?

AP now has the same list of damned-good questions as you do. They're reading them right here and they could answer them right here, in front of everyone, so you could then verify the answers when you get there. Why don't they?

Let's not forget the appalling behaviour from AP in everything they've said and done so far. If the bad guys are still in charge behind the scenes (and they never did name names as they promised), your trip is not just pointless, it could be a genuinely bad idea.

Consider: this is a multi-million-dollar operation and it's been proven to be a criminal enterprise, completely corrupt, right at the very top. They have to PROVE that has changed by coming clean on everything (banning HHs doesn't qualify, for example).

Millions of dollars are at stake here. Of course you won't 'disappear', but you could very easily be faced with threats, bribery and coercion. (Hell, they might even be involved with much worse than just online poker - especially the resident coke-fiends. Assuming otherwise... well, we all know what assumption is the mother of.)

All these questions are public, yet AP will only answer them (presuming they actually do) to you, in person, in Costa Rica.

Whatever the reason for that, it's not full disclosure.

[Vee Quiva]

How about a quick visit with the police or law enforcement of Costa Rica? I'd want to make sure that they can punish whoever is responsible.

In fact after this trip I think someone should head North to Canada and see if there is any law enforcement up there that can come down on the KGC?

[ikestoys]

[ QUOTE ]
Nat,

Dead on Impact(Ptowner on AP?) posted his convo with a VIP rep in the other thread.

The standout of which was that AP is ONLY AUDITING A THREE WEEK TIMEFRAME!

Please get some answers on this.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
First off, the person I had talked to I believe used to be the manager of VIP and we used to talk frequently so he was very kind and did give me a good amount of info.

-They are having a company come in called gaming associates and they are an independent auditing firm.

-unfortunatly they will only be auditing a 3 week time frame where they believe these players were playing in.
(i'm pretty sure most regulars on AP have lost to these guys in a longer time frame then 3 weeks)

-He stated that if you did lose more money to these guys out of the 3 week period that they would work with you and pay the money with interest.

-Ap's management felt that we as players and posters on 2+2, that we thought steamroller, graycat, doubledrag were donkey's and aparently from what we have wrote that these guys were losing lot's before this all happened. I corrected him, from my knowledge at least graycat and doubledrag played every hand and would bet so agressivly into any amount of players in the pot we felt that they were poor players and exploitable. The fact is they were playing like this and always winning.

- He apoligized to me about how poorly AP's PR has handled this situation and stated "it did look like Absolute was trying to cover up the situation" he says now that they are going to man up and try to regain our trust back.

-He took down my Poker tracker losses from all 3 players and said that he will make sure I am reimbursed all of what I lost plus interest.

-Basically my last words to him was AP makes lot's of money. If they short people with this audit and players know how much their suppose to get and get shorted there only going to piss them off even more and want to screw with AP's rep even more.

- From the conversation it seems these guys are reading 2+2 and pocket 5's religiously(He told me he's read every article about AP through getting it from 2+2 I beleive). So if you have something to say there probably going to read it.


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[fouronefive]

[ QUOTE ]
Haven't replyed to any AP threads, but I've read them all with interest.

Nat, I'd definitely like hear your report.

AP should pay back those cheated, NOT Nat. That's just absurd.

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Not that anyone cares, but since I took the time to reply, might as well make my OP clear. I meant AP should pay BOTH Nat and AP. The fact AP pays Nat is unrelated to the fact AP needs to compensate those cheated...