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Struggling online poker room Pitbull Poker has shut its doors according to reports across the Net on Wednesday. The company has been embroiled in accusations of "cheating" in recent months. Those customers of Pitbull Poker were not likely to have funds returned. The online poker room was not endorsed by Gambling911.com.
Pitbull Poker had sought to attract customers by giving any new player $10 just for opening up an account with them, long considered a red flag among online gambling professionals.
AintLuck.com initially offered this summary of Pitbull Poker's ownership:
Adding to the hysteria surrounding the site, is an unwillingness or perhaps an inability of the site to provide detailed hand histories upon request, a standard practice afforded to players of all the other major sites. This prompted one angry customer to do some research into the company which created the software and he found a very checkered history. Among the facts uncovered:
In 2000, Federico Schiavio, a high level IT employee of Binions, registered the domain wsop.com and began developing custom poker software to launch a poker site on this domain March 23, 2004 Harrahs takes legal action against Mr. Schiavio over the wsop.com domain April 19, 2004 Dimensus Ltd, the parent company of Pitbull Poker is formed. WSOP.com under Mr. Shiavio announces an arrangement with pitbull poker and launches the software. A scam artist named Kevin Baronowsky gets involved. He is the registrant of the following domains: o pherx.com a pherehormone selling site o pitbullpokr.com(no typo) which redirects to pitbullpoker.com o xardplayer.com(no typo) also redirects to pitbullpoker.com o All of these sites are found on the same servers. dsscanuck is a screen name it appears he used on a forum that discusses illegally accessing satellite television. In a discussion on that forum it seems that he was busted by a government agency for selling illegal equipment and turned informant against his customers. dsscanuck.com is now a blank website that holds banners for pherx.com and eczemaderm.com. eczemaderm.com is a site that sells a steroid cream product and happens to be hosted on the pherx.com servers.
There were unconfirmed reports that Pitbull Poker officials were arrested in Costa Rica after attempting to flee their office with computers and server equipment during the early morning hours.
Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
