I have to write an article about this, but it takes a lot to organize it, so thought I'd try putting together some of the framework here. It takes some work to explain to anyone who doesn't play or watch poker games.

To start: The states of Nevada and New Jersey have been the first to enact legislation which allows companies in their state to operate an online gambling site for live interactive poker games wagering real money. Nevada has actually reached the stage that it has regulations & a process, and has now approved the very first site, which is www.UltimatePoker.com. This is now the first legal, U.S.-located poker site where you can play poker for money. (But it's restricted to residents of Nevada.)

UltimatePoker.com is under the authority of the Nevada Gaming Commission, just like all the brick-and-mortar casinos. The Gaming Commission was established originally to get organized crime out of the casinos and keep it out. In the case of online gaming, they are also responsible for keeping out crime connected with what the federal government has called illegal online gaming, including all foreign gambling sites that permitted (or still permit) U.S. players to deposit and gamble on their sites.

(Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, Party Poker, and Ultimate Bet were among those foreign sites. A couple of them, Poker Stars and Party Poker, have been working to get legal with the U.S. again, and it might happen. Then they would be allowed to participate in the legal U.S. gaming market.)

There's only one poker site, and the Gaming Commission has failed already.

NOT ONLY has this poker site chosen a name that is nearly identical to a site that was seized by the feds -- Ultimate Poker/ Ultimate Bet -- but it allowed one of its contractors to hire the very company deeply involved in the worst cheating scandal ever of online poker.

Ultimate Poker, you see, hired a company called CAMS to do some security work for them -- like verifying players and such. CAMS hired Iovation, which is owned and run by Greg Pierson. He was the founder of the rogue site Ultimate Bet (UB for short).

NOT ONLY is Ultimate Poker linked now indirectly to Greg Pierson and UB, but fresh news just broke within the week that shows the original UB scandal was a whole lot worse than many realized.

It started with Greg Pierson, whose company eLogic wrote the software for UB, and founded UB with Russ Hamilton. Russ Hamilton is a poker player who won the World Series of Poker in 1997 or 8. Pierson wrote the software for the site, and Russ was going to be the poker pro who would draw people to the site.

Texas Holdem is the main game of any poker site. It involves dealing 2 cards face down to all players. Then 5 more cards are dealt faceup and they are shared by everyone at the table to make a hand.

If you've watched poker on TV, you've seen players carefully lift the edges and peek at those "hole cards" and then carefully flatten them down again so no one else can possibly catch a glimpse.

Greg Pierson had a version of the poker site's software which had a tool that showed to the administrator all the players' hole cards. Such a tool is probably necessary for tournaments and things, but it should never have been given to or used by a player on the site. But this administrator's version was given to Russ Hamilton, who began using it to play other big stakes players and cheat them.

And he just couldn't help doing it to the amount of millions and millions of dollars. He'd invite big name players onto the site to play one-on-one with him. He even began taking out funds from the company to use to stake those big players, then he'd rob the money back by cheating them. It was incredible how much and how fast he'd do it. He created fake player accounts so it looked like someone else was doing it.

The fact that he was able to simply take funds any old time to stake other players demonstrates how much power he had in the company. He was NOT a host or spokesman like others have been, such as Lou Krieger on Royal Vegas Poker. (Lou Krieger is a player who died recently; he wrote the first Poker For Dummies book. I knew him, nice guy.)

In the aftermath of the scandal, when Russ Hamilton met with Greg Pierson and two others in the company to discuss how to deal with a regulator, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Russ recorded the meetings.

His assistant, who was in trouble too, made copies of the audio files and just last week released them to the public.

During the meetings, Russ and Greg et al discussed how much money they stole, and how to cover it up now, and how much they would consider paying back to players to settle the whole thing.

The recordings are amazing in what they reveal. Also amazing is the attitudes of these men, who used their company as if it were their own personal bank account.

That points to another problem in online poker, which the U.S. government also didn't like: Players tended to leave large amounts of money in their online poker accounts, to play later, or to transfer from their accounts to other players when they had debts to pay or wanted to loan money. They used poker accounts like bank accounts.

The U.S. has been trying to shut down all such online wallets that it cannot control. (Just like they're trying to shut down an unregulated currency, Bitcoin.)

Funds that players deposit to their account on a website are supposed to be kept separate, segregated, from any company money, since it was deposited or won by the player, not the poker site. But UB obviously took money straight out of players' accounts.

Online poker is designed to be a steady earning thing for the site, not a big earner like other gambling games are. That is because the players are not betting against the house, but against other players. The house -- or site -- makes money by charging a small percentage of every pot played for, and this is called the rake. It's a fee for hosting the game.

No poker site would make money anywhere near as fast as a sportsbetting or casino site. But it also will not lose money as a casino would, when someone hits a jackpot.

Poker sites make money because of volume. But that wasn't enough for these men. They had to steal too, and apparently did so with the appetite of Jabba the Hutt. At one point in the recording, Hamilton says something about "taking 40 million out" of the company. He implicates Pierson in taking millions out as well, and suggests a lot was to fund another company.

PokerNews.com suggests it was even more: 50 million.

The ones who uncovered most information was players themselves, researching and investigating as they could, until finally the assistant gave those recordings to one of them.

The issue has been kept alive by poker players posting on the famous poker forum, TwoPlusTwo.com. That's where poker news usually breaks. It is a site headed by an odd poker writer, Mason Malmouth, along with the famous player David Sklansky, who works on the forums and writes for it.

One of the never-tiring investigators of this scandal is Haley Hintze, who is a sweet person and highly intelligent. She's writing a book on it now. She had a ton of information at least 6 or 7 years ago and never stopped.

****Oh, yes: I completely forgot to note that UltimatePoker severed ties with CAMS and Iovation almost faster than the news came out. They were quick to act, but they should have been watching, I think. I still can't understand why they chose the name, though.