CBS’s investigative newsmagazine, 60 Minutes will finally air its exclusive online poker report on Sunday, November 30^th, 2008 at 7:00 pm. The investigation conducted by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and The Washington Post's two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul, will cover Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet cheating scandals as well as other stories of greed and fraud that have affected the online poker industry and its reputation.

The cheating scandal that shocked the online poker community started a couple of years ago, when a superuser account was detected and traced back to Absolute Poker’s office. At the beginning, Absolute Poker refused to make any comments and rejected the possibility of having someone breaking into their security system, but after several months getting critics for not taking any measures to clear the situation, Absolute finally decided to conduct an internal investigation. After several weeks of investigation, Absolute admitted that there was a superuser account and that some of their players were indeed cheated by the superuser. After further investigation ordered by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Absolute Poker was found responsible of acting recklessly and received a $500,000 fine and ordered to reimburse all the affected players.

Something similar happened at UltimateBet.com when allegations of another superuser account begun populating the online poker forums. However, by the time these allegations started to come up, the company had already conducted an internal investigation and claimed that UltimateBet’s former owners and employees were behind the fraudulent activity. UltimateBet stated it had removed the cheating software as of February 2008 and began issuing refunds to affected players. But even when the situation really damaged the industry’s reputation and integrity, it may have been beneficial for the online poker business after all, the scandal has set a precedent that will possibly help the sites that really care about their costumers and business not only to be more careful and strict with their security procedures, but also to pay attention to their players claims and allegations.