Today we bring you, gossip, allegations, unverified facts, and a bit of soap box politics. Have you ever wondered what sort of credentials must be attained to open and operate an online poker website? What background checks must be passed? Can any criminal open a multimillion dollar gambling operation?
Why, Sir yes sir any one with 8 bucks for Godaddy can open a website, it does take a lot more skill however to design poker software… Here’s the thing about that. Even if the programmer thinks they have designed a fabulous product, secure online poker that’s fun for everyone, what agency tests it for holes?
American’s continuously ask our government to come and protect us. We ask that you tax and profit, and regulate the online poker industry. What do we get? More ignorance, much like the new law in Washington Casinos that allows ‘all in betting’ … up to $500, making the max bet at a ‘no limit’ poker game, either $40, or All in for $500.
We get more laws, more infringements on our freedoms, and every day we get to watch our government screw us due to the lack of the line item veto. Just little things like, poker regulation mixed in with National Security bills, or gun laws tacked onto the back of credit card regulation legislation.
Meanwhile, we hear rumors and reports of companies out and out cheating Americans, rumors like the one we’ll outline below, of online poker rooms with shady software that allows super users to see the whole cards of other online poker players.
A new story is brewing on the popular poker forum 2+2 that involves Pitbull Poker.
Poker players have done some amazing research, as has become the norm in the online poker industry, ferreting out the crooks, and those that would cheat poker players out of millions of dollars.
The story begins like this…
In the year 2000, this is pre-September 11 here folks.. way way back when online poker was still relatively new and largely unheard of, a man named Federico Schiavio, an IT employee of Binions Casino bought a website name.
He went to someplace like godaddy.com and bought the domain. Meaning that he could someday put a website there. The name of the website was WSOP.com. There’s a lot more to this part of this saga, it’s all quite interesting, and covered in depth on this blog.
In or around the same time, it’s rumored the Schiavio began building online poker software, software is the world you visit when you loggin to a place like Pokerstars.com or Full Tilt Poker. They look different, they offer different features, etc.
Well come 2004, Harrahs isn’t to happy to find Schiavio encroaching on their brand. As a result, in March of 2004 Harrahs begins legal action against Schiavio for the WSOP.com domain.
In April of 2004, some other interesting activity is going on. A company named Dimensus Ltd is put together as the parent company of an up an coming online poker room, Pitbull Poker. (pitbullpoker.com).
Shortly thereafter, an arrangement is apparently made between Shiavio and involving his website WSOP.com and Pitbullpoker.com.
It’s rumored that the guys at Pitbull Poker even used Shiavio’s software, remember, the software he was alledgedly creating back in 2000 or so.
Enter Kevin Baronowsky: according to the online poker sleuths at 2+2 Baronowsky owns a few websites of his own. There’s pherx.com website that sells pherehormone’s and a couple typo domains, such as pitbullpokr.com and xardplayer.com. Both of the two typo websites redirect to pitbullpoker.com (meaning if you go to xardplayer.com your computer will automatically take you to pitbullpoker.com).
Now let’s look as the online poker players at 2+2 have, at an Internet screen name, dsscanuck, a user name used online at a forum that talks about receiving satellite television illegally.
There’s a person on THAT forum that shares with the community that he was busted for selling illegal satellite equipment, he turned state and provided evidence about his clients to the government to save his own skin.
If you check out dsscanuck.com you’ll be greeted by banners for … pherx.com as well as eczemaderm.com. So what’s eczemaderm.com? eczemaderm.com is a 
website that sells steroid cream. What’s steroid have to do with this particular conspiracy theory? Absolutely nothing. However, eczemaderm.com is hosted on the very same servers as pherx.com and none other than.. WSOP.com.
Now in addition to all of this fascinating information… there has been online poker cheating allegations made against Pitbull Poker, same old story… super users with the ability to see hole cards.
Players have also allegedly asked Pitbull Poker for hand histories, delivered in a format that they could use. The online poker website allegedly refused to deliver.
In fact, as of today, you just flat out cannot have an online hand history. So no one’s saying there ARE superusers, nothings been proven, but some people might be saying that Pitbull is making it awfully difficult to prove or disprove their existence.
Makes you want to complain to the owner doesn’t it? Ask him what’s going on?! Is your money really safe at this online poker room? Well, that’s what we’re here for… to provide you with ownership information. . .
The parent company of Pitbull Poker was apparently dissolved on March 10th of 2009. So, as far as we, and the folks at 2+2 can discern, there is no owner! A poster on 2+2 “PBDave†says that the ownership was transferred to a company based in Cyprus, no records have been produced to support this claim.
Dimensus, the former parent company never actually had a gambling license (Semantics right?!?) however, the company claims to be in Costa Rica, where they actually wouldn’t need one.
Costa Rica? Wait, Pitbull claims to be a UK Company.
The UK Gaming commission has been informed of the possibility of an illegal gambling business.
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