UltimateBet, also known as UB, was one of the largest US poker sites before April 15, 2011. The story of this site had previously gone a bit cold after April 15th, the date now referred to as Black Friday by the American online poker playing community.

While it was well known that they had not been paying U.S. customers and were barely paying their small amount of remaining funds to international customers, not much has been heard from or about the company in quite some time. However, that all changed on January 19, 2012 when a new lawsuit against the parent company of UltimateBet came to light.

A group of 8 poker players filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in California against 6356095 Canada Inc., which used to be known as Excapsa Software Inc. The group are alleging that Excapsa, as well as up to 10 Jane or John Does, violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

On top of that, Excapsa is being accused of defrauding players and exhibiting negligence which enabled over $20 million to be stolen from the many players who frequented high stakes cash games during UltimateBet’s most popular period.

The group is seeking a minimum of $1.73 million in compensation as well as potential punitive damage. The plaintiffs include well known players such as Brad Booth, Dustin “neverwin” Woolf and Thomas Koral. These players clearly haven’t had much success on the best Euro poker sites since UltimateBet went down.

Perhaps further complicating the case is the fact that 6356095 Canada Inc. is dealing with liquidation proceedings in Canada. It remains to be seen how this will affect the new legal problems with the eight plaintiffs.

Between 2003 and 2008 there were multiple cheaters on UltimateBet who utilized a hole in the software that allowed them to see their opponents’ hole cards. While UltimateBet acknowledged this and refunded the majority of this money if not all of it, the plaintiffs are alleging that the losses were vastly underestimated.

These players would probably be better off just playing on a Cake Poker download because there is little chance that they will get any money out of the fallen poker site this way. Stranger things have happened, though, so we will wait and see how it plays out.