SOURCE: MSNBC.com

« Continued from page 3

Who was the mysterious observer?

Ravitch, a blogger known as "Adanthar" in the online poker community, and Nat Arem, another player involved in posting the tournament re-creation, began fielding a flood of tips from insiders in the offshore Internet gambling industry and continued to press their case.

With help from other players, they traced the IP address of a mysterious observer at Potripper's table to Costa Rica and determined that the account was an internal Absolute Poker account developed during beta testing.

They also cross-referenced an e-mail address used by the observer and found that it apparently belonged to Scott Tom, who they identified as either a past or current official at Absolute Poker.

It was only in this last detail that the amateur sleuths erred, according to the account emerging Friday.

Adam Small, an official with Pocketfives.com, a community of online tournament poker players, said that he spoke with officials of Absolute Poker on Thursday night and was told that the rogue employee had deliberately used information pointing to Tom.

"What they said on the phone was that it was not Scott Tom ... and that he has sort of framed Scott Tom," he said.

The Absolute Poker spokesman did not confirm that the employee had attempted to frame Tom, but he said, "No management was involved, and Scott Tom ... had no part in playing on any of these accounts."

In a statement earlier this week, Absolute Poker said Tom "has not been involved with Absolute Poker for over a year and to the best of our knowledge, information and belief has not had access to any of Absolute Poker's systems, databases or information."

Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5