It's not negligence; it's theft. They paid themselves with player funds. That's theft. In some sort of weird effort to protect their fragile egos, they loaned money to players withoutt their knowledge from other players without their knowledge. That's robbing Peter to pay Paul (in the weirdest way possible). That's also theft.

Since the company turned out to be fraudulent it's hard to say anyone should actually owe money for these phantom deposits. But now that it looks like player balances are going to be released, I believe there should be some accountability on the part of the players who never had to pay for deposits they made.

I felt inconvenienced when a couple of deposits from November '10 were deducted from my bank account in March '11, since I had forgotten about them. I think they even caused some overdraft fees. But that was my fault for not keeping better records. I don't remember seeing a time limit for processing deposits in FT's TOS. And there were also people who took advantage of the delays in processing and made large deposits and then closed their bank accounts to avoid having to pay. From what I understand, these actions contributed to FT's liquidity issues.

For those with balances greater than the amount of their deposits that were never processed, they should only get the difference. For players who lost this free money I do think they should have to pay, especially if it affects the repayment to all the players' who did have to pay for 100% of their deposits.

The argument made in the posts directly above my last one has me backing off my stance a little to be honest. My response is why is money won through this corrupt site any more legitimate than money deposited into it? If they aren't going to collect from deposits that never processed for the reason that the whole company was corrupt, then why should they now repay winnings? If Bob phantom deposits 2k and loses it to Jim in a cash game, should Jim deserve 2k from the DOJ? It would make more sense to only repay players' deposits, no winnings. Just repay every deposit every player has ever made to the site from the time that the company first became corrupt.

makes no sense tho. Bob lost his 2k phantom deposit to Jim, you want to go into Jims account and give Bob his 2k back, Bob got to freeroll everytime he sat down and played? You punish Jim for winning fair and square. Jim is a professional poker player and has been playing with a deposit he made in 2007 and has never deposited onto the site since? Jims life roll is now thrown into the garbage and he gets none of his winnings? Jim is now in Costa Rica, playing half the stakes he used to play and desperately needs his FTP winnings to live, pay off old debts and to get his life back in order. Why is Bob getting his 2k back that he thought he lost fair and square, makes 0 sense at all.

edit: Also, how exactly do you pay back a phantom deposit? The money never even came out of Bobs bank account, so he not only got to freeroll everytime he played, he now gets a free 2k check from the government lol?

I didn't mean pay back phantom deposits, meant real deposits that were processed. But the more I think about it, this is absurd. Someone who deposited a ton of money and lost it should not be refunded. I am just going to say that I don't know what on earth the solution to this mess is.

Bottom line is, yes, the DOJ could spend many months fixing this accounting mess and going through the legal process to collect these deposits and the process of actually collecting. Nobody wants to do this though. Its a complete mess and hassle. I am a poker pro and need my money, all players want to get paid now, hell we wanted to be paid in April when Stars paid, its been 8 full months, we dont want to wait another 12-24 months while these deposits are fixed to be paid. The DOJ has more pressing matters to deal with. FTP is ready to move on and new owners are ready to go forward with their business deal. Old FTP owners are ready to get their name out of mud and go bury their head in the sand and just disappear from the public. ALL parties involved want to move forward and move on, dragging this junk out for many more months is in nobodies best interests.

You want to get paid in full then you'd better hope that somebody does want to do this and is willing to go through the mess and hassle. I've read in these threads that the phantom deposits are appx $120MM. Do you think that you can be paid in full w/o those funds and, if you do, where does the money come from? Add it up, all the money GBT is paying and the reported amounts of BF seizures. It's not enough unless the DOJ will let go of all seized processor funds and then it's close I suppose but I've read no indication that they will.

the money should come from GBT. they are buying into a broken business, and the only way to fix it would be to pay all liabilities. if they didn't want to do this, then they should have just started up their own brand new poker site and saved all of FTP's liabilities and used it as capital to get the business up and running. why pick something up that was driven into the ground by thieves who stole from the people who made them rich? leave it to die, or go all in.

before someone says that the reason that FTP has value because of it's software and it would be better than anything they could develop, money should be no object.

I would just like to clarify the point I was trying to make in that badly worded post and then I will not post on the topic of phantom deposits anymore ITT. The fact that FT allowed people to deposit and did not have the means of collecting the money, meant there was a large amount of "phantom money" being thrown around on the tables. This affects the fairness of the game. Whether FT intended to process those deposits eventually does not matter because they didn't, and I believe they knew what was coming. I am also sure that some players knew they could get away with it. IMO this alone ruins the legitimacy of the whole site. This means that people who deposited did so under false pretenses.. they thought they were playing for real money, they thought they were competing against other people who were risking real money. I feel sorry for people who had large rolls on there on BF (I had low 4 figures), but I also feel sorry for the people who deposited and lost. Because they were being scammed. FT was insolvent and people were freerolling, not to mention FT pro's rumored to be playing on credit. I'm just not sure that a player who deposited $1,000 during late '10 early '11 doesn't have as much right to get that $1,000 back than somebody who won $50,000 during that same period and had it all frozen on BF. Obviously the money won by any given player was deposited by another player who lost so both parties can't be compensated. So like I said, I don't know what the solution is. It's going to be interesting to see how the DOJ handles this.

Suppose I deposit $500 over a year ago and it never gets collected and you say now I should not buy a Christmas present this year in the idea that I should have known that after all this time I still owed that money? I mean if I go out shopping and buy stuff from a bunch of stores and then next month when I get my card statment it seems like I have a higher balance than expected I'm to investigate exactly what purchase didn't clear? Maybe I should leave the $$ there for another month but at some point it no longer becomes my responsability and I think that point has long passed with FTP!

WHY?!?!? Think abou what you're really asking. Basically for some poor person to sacrifice so for that lobster dinner Ray just ate... its that simple. When you ask to collect this money from people that SHOULD have been collected from them, you're automatically not asking for it to be restored to scammed players, but to sanction the fraud/theft that FTP perpetrated, because that is where all those "deposits" that were never collected actually went. Instaed of being written off as buisness losse they pretended the money was there by taking it out of cleared deposits and paying it out as dividends that should have never been given. Why would I ever susides such a thing?

So based on all of that I would actually advocate paying out all balances without checking unless we first do clawback from all those that actually are in posession of this money. Even in the worst case scenario where somone knowingly made a deposit witout intending for it to clear, that was only possible because the owners of FTP allowed that practice since it helped them pretend there was more cash there that they could then steal themselves. So why force one con artist to make reparation while subsidising the theft of another that stole significantly more. And before you say some at ftp are facing criminal charges, note that while the doj did release a statment that a pnzi scheme was being run, none of the criminal charges are as of yet actualy related to that, and untill that occurs (along with the ensuant clawback of the procedes of said crime) it would be ridiculous to go after pety thievs that tried to scam a few k here and there. But that's not likely going to happen, so I guess the moral of the story is if you're going to steal, steal big so you can get away with it!

Just so there's less confusion, I think that people that atempted to make a deposit in good faith but if was never collected should not have to pay it back now, but that those that actually tried to "make bad deposits" should. Those would be people that closed the account the same week they atempted a deposit or did multiple deposits and/or withdrew from they actual banck account the very next day. But I belive that will ultimately prove to be ~5% of the people/problem. And as I said, even these people should take a back seat to those that are actually repsonible for this mess as FTP, and untill that happens I would consider it "unjust" to go after these small fish first.

I'm not much of a writer, I was trying to say FTP was incompetent, but Noah is right when he said they were more thieves than fools.

I'm not angry at anyone for not having a deposit cleared, and I don't think anyone that has an outstanding echeck would be mad if they were given the opportunity to make good on it.

There is really no way to force payment from someone who received a freeroll and lost anyway, but those who actually withdrew those phantom deposits can and will if needed be taken to court for unjust enrichment - to bail out the players, not FTP.


Assuming the facts as we know them, the DOJ is not getting enough money for FTPs assets to make players whole, and it could be years before they get a conviction or a settlement on the individual criminal charges from which to receive additional proceeds.

Hopefully the DOJ will recommend an interim distribution from the $80M, but that would still leave players short 50% of their money and the trustee appointed to make the victims whole will have nothing better to do than go after the net (deposit) winners from this fraudulent deposit scheme.

Whether or not it is fair, in every fraudulent scheme the trustee attempts to collect the net (investment/deposit) winnings from those who withdrew more than they invested/deposited (with poker winnings being deposits legally), in a Ponzi scheme the early investors learn that they have received involuntary loans from fellow investors when they innocently thought they were withdrawing profits.

It's not fair, but the law considers the need to repair the greater injustice of the person who actually lost real money invested/deposited (or won in this case) to have priority, so the net (deposit) winners are collected from in order to make the net losers whole.

So people generally think recovered "Phantom Deposits" will be pursued by the DOJ (Trustee likely) in order to make player balances whole? This doesn't sound like a bad idea, but where did anybody get the notion that they would use the money for that (player recovery) IF they actully went after it? Could they not just keep it since it is their assets from FTP? Would some of you be so anxious to recover "Phantom Deposits" if the players were not to get it? I know I don't mind my pittance $220 being recovered for players, but for DOJ to grab it back makes me less happy!

Anybody who blances his own chequebook knows he owes the money, so yeah, there's going to be a lot of surprised people if the DoJ tries to collect phantom deposits.

I'm having a hard time seeing somebody who made a $1000 phantom deposit and lost $900 of it to play and rake as a victim. AORN he's up $900. Since about 90% of the phantom deposit money is uncollectable from current balances, such a situation seems to describe most phantom depositors.

The DoJ going after phantom deposits doesn't bail out FTP in any way. FTP end up with the same amount whether DoJ go after the payments or not: nothing. Who it bails out is the American taxpayer.

People who made phantom deposits got screwed over by FTP less than those who didn't make such deposits. They got an interest free loan, which is something of financial value. And since the vast majority of phantom deposits no longer have a corresponding account balance on the site, most phantom depositors continue to benefit from that loan to this very day, and didn't get screwed over at all.

Some portion of those who made phantom deposits did so in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of FTP's payment processing difficulties. These ones deserve not only to have the money taken from them, but also to be prosecuted for fraud.

Maybe you can shed some light here again, is there any reason to believe the DOJ will or won't apply any recovered "Phantom Deposits" to help with player recovery. They really don't have to give any collected deposits to players do they? They "could" just keep it possibly? Any ideas?