I took this report to someone with a background in both economics/statistics and computer programming/coding. They said there is nothing in it that is not sound. He also said that since it was apparently done in 2015, things could have changed at Bovada since then. He said that it appears as though the worst wrong doing is in the coding and building of the RNG itself. He also said that he thought that if he spent a little time and effort on it, he could likely exploit the RNG himself and/or build a bot to exploit the lack of security at the site. He does not play poker, although he has before in the past; so he is not totally naive about the game.
I personally have been thinking about this a lot the past few days. In regards to the accusation that it should be dismissed because the authors remain anonymous: if these people were in fact contracted to do this study, then it would make sense that whoever hired them would not have wanted them to leak their work to the public. Another reason for the anonymity could be that they themselves have decided to use everything they found in their research to cheat and make money on the site. In any case, I don't think it is a fair argument against the report being real and not a hoax.
I have to admit that part of me still has doubts about the report. I am not a scientist but I have studied in it before, and one of the things you never do if you want to remain scientific in conclusions is to make them without adequate evidence, usually in the form of empirical data. Until I can see the actual data published to completely verify the report and the authors claims in it, I cannot come to the conclusion that this cheating is absolutely happening. Even if I could have that data and verify it, and have it go through some sort of peer review, it would only prove that such cheating activity was happening at that time, and it would not contribute to any conclusions drawn about what is happening at the site currently.
Sadly, the only thing proven in any of this is how much better online poker would be if it were federally legalized and regulated.
On a side note, to everyone wanting to believe that Bovada, or any other online poker room, is rigged or has cheaters everywhere simply because they had a bunch of bad beats in a row one day, or two days, or for a whole month: That is not how it works. You need a massive sample size to even try to show anything deviating from the usual statistics.