If my savings and loan company 'enabled' scumbags to steal customer's deposits by dealing out unsecured loans to deadbeats they might be partially responsible morally for the losses of their customers, but if they had no FDIC insurance and were forced into liquidation, I don't give a rats ass about moral responsibility I want my money recovered from the people who actually have it.

It's a shame that for most money seems to easily trump moraility... but as I (we) have been trying to say, even in that case you're still looking at it the wrong way. Not sure how to get this across but I'll try it another way. FTP here was not only an enabler of the phantom deposits, BUT THE THIEF OF THE REAL DEPOSITS! And while the actual thievs may no longer be in possesion of the majority of the funds as they gave it away in the form of dividends, you do know who actualy recived the money, and "the people who actually have it" are NOT THE PHANTOM DEPOSITORS.

In order to pay out proper dividents they had to account for the loses resulting from phantom deposits, and refusing to do so meant that they had to steal your money in order to keep pretending that there were no operational loses. So agian, the shareholders have "your money" because it was taken out of YOUR acconts to pay dividends without accounting for any loses from phantom deposits, which would have simply meant (much) smaller dividends but no stealing by anyone from anyone. Hence you'd still have had all your money even with the same phantom deposits without theft by FTP. The opposite cannot be true! The overall shortfall in player funds was much larger that the total in phantom depoists, therefore it is clear stealing was occuring as a result of more than covering for these phantom deposits.

thing that allot of people are missing is that FTP did not have authority to get the money. This was a problem with netteller,instadebit and the rest.
On FTP's books it would be shown as an accounts receiveable from those prosessors.
YES they should have stopped as soon as the prosessors knew there was a problem getting the funds, but how long before anybody in authority with FTP knew that there was going to be a problem?
Most e-cheques take at least 3-5 days to clear, should FTP have made people wait 3-5 days to play until after the cheques cleared? probably, but in allot of these cases these were regular customers that had no problems in the past with checks clearing,so they took a chance.
I still think that at least some of the blame has to be laid on the shoulders of the prosessor's also!

Some of you are absolutely convinced these PDs can and should be collected by DOJ/Trustee! Can't argue that one! Hope you are right that then the DOJ will use whatever collected funds to clear up players balances. They may very well do that, but guys, they don't have to do it! I think it is clear that they could simply keep it as part of the assets forfiture! This could be a problem down the road for USA players. Hope there is action of some kind that could be taken (if the DOJ/Trustee make another money grab) that might block this. A bit paranoid about DOJ? Yes.

I don't know whether you just didn't think this through, or you actually believe this, but what you are effectively saying is that FTP took the players money, the PD's took FTP's money, so now that FTP doesn't have enough money to pay their debt's, it's somehow immoral for the players to want the PD's to turn over the money they took from FTP.

Is that like a Robinhood view of morality? People who defraud fraudsters are the heroes in this tragedy?

If the DOJ wanted to grab the money they wouldn't be negotiating with Tapie, they could just contest the forfeiture claims, sell the assets to the highest bidder in liquidation and collect the debts from those unjustly enriched.

The only logical reason for them to be negotiating is that they view players, US and ROW, to be victims and would like to see them made whole.

I don't believe it is coincidence that they settled on $80M + ~$120M uncollected debt when players are owed ~$140M and 50% is a reasonable expectation in debt collection. $80M + .50($120M) = $140M

Everything the DOJ has said and done lends strength to the theory that they will use the funds recovered from the forfeiture to repay players, but since it's possible that it's all been a giant ruse just to get our hopes uip and crush our souls, your paranoia is probably warranted.

Another thing...

Do people here really believe all 140M of the "phantom deposits" was actually lost at the tables? Most assuredly a nice amt of this $$ is sitting on the site locked up in players accounts (lets not forget the FT rake of all of this $$).

Man, FT blew things way out of proportion here. They took the $$ and ran....how else can you explain 4-5 months of letting players do phantom deposits? Holding players responsible who were able to deposit without FT debiting their bank acct is absolutely asinine.

If I had significant $$ locked up on this site, I would be blaming everyone associated with FT. I wouldn't even give a thought to the players who were able to deposit without their accts being debited.

$9M is sitting in player accounts, what was lost at the tables is lost short of honest people wanting to remain honest, only withdrawals that exceed deposits + winnings is forcibly recoverable. (obviously rake is irrelevant since % of rake multiplied by phantom money equals phantom rake)

Everyone associated with FTP is pooling their equity to get all ROW deposits repaid plus $80M towards the $150M us debt, so FTP is effectively getting clawed back ~$240M whereas the unlawful dividends they were paid in the past year in which the company was insolvent are ~120M, and the litigation to recover individual assets from the responsible individuals could take years and be eaten up by legal costs.

So FTP shareholders are giving up roughly double what they unjustly received, and the goal is to recover half of what depositors unjustly received, how anyone can view that ratio to be morally out of balance I do not understand.

Let me clarify something....me saying that phantom debtors (yay I coined a new phrase) should have to pay up does not mean that I am saying that FT is not liable for their actions.

In other words, FT chose to credit these folks (me being one of them) and if they were still solvent but had no means to collect, then shame on them for not changing their policies and they would have to just eat the losses.

But this is not the case any longer. Their assets are being sold to a 3rd party who has the means to collect.....namely the DOJ. And if the DOJ believes the cost to collect those funds will be cheaper than the actual money to be recovered by such an effort, then the phantom debtor should absolutely have to pay up.

Sigh... you just don't get it! MOST PD"s did not take anyone's money. FTP simply did not take their money and then led everyone to think the cash was all there. Hardly the same thing. Whether or not you think they owe you/FTP the money, it should be obvious that they did not steal your money, or even FTP's as FTP basically just let them freeroll for their own gain, while chosing to steal from you. But that was not the PD's choice, it was FTP's. And I never said that it was immoral to ask the phantom depositors to make good on the check, but I did say it was unreasonable to do so while not asking any of the sharholders to give back all the funds that were stolen from your account in a much more direct manner in order to unjustly enrich them.

I've stated over and over that while a PD should feel a moral obligation to make good on his debt, he didn't take anything of legal value (poker play) so I nor the law have an argument with the PD (D for Depositor), but the PD becomes a RD (real debtor) if/when he took a real withdrawal from that phantom deposit.

If someone received money from FTP that they didn't Really deposit or Really win I can't wrap my mind around their moral entitlement to keep it.

This is something: There are ppl who think there's something wrong w/ holding ppl liable to complete their express, self-performing intentions w/ other parties having relied upon them.

I will stay a little paranoid and keep my fingers crossed that your view turns out to be the end game. It should , hope it does

So when a player unintentionally makes a phantm deposit of $100 from his $100 bank account, and loses it all in play and rake, he still has $100 in his bank account. Whose money is it?

I agree with you that, given the uncertainty of collection, deposits should not have been booked as current assets until the money was actually collected. And dividend payments should only be made if current assets exceed current liabilites by at least the amount of the dividend payment. However, your position seem to require that all phantom payments be written off as permanently uncollectable. I'm less certain that this is a correct position to take. Those amounts should only be written off as uncollectable long-term assets if it is impossible, legally or practically, to ever collect them. Yet our discussion of the DoJ going after phantom depostiors turns on the assumption that it is legally possible to do so. If so, these assets currently are long-term assets of FTP.

If you say that the shareholders have the non-phantom depositors' money, it is at least as valid to say that the phantom depostors have FTP's money. If FTP and the DoJ cannot return players' actual money to them, then the DoJ will compensate players out of FTP's own assets, to the extent they can obtain them. Furthermore, it is nonsensical to say that FTP gave the shareholders the phantom-depositors' money, because FTP never collected the phantom deposits. It follows that the shareholders also don't have the phantom money that non-phantom depositors won from phantom depositors. The only money that FTP could steal from players is money it actually got from players.

Given that it is legally impossible to recover the dividends from non-complicit shareholders, and may be practially impossible to collect the full amount of the dividend payments from the directors, I fail to see why it is morally wrong for the government, once it has obtained FTP's assets by forfeiture, to collect those assets for the purpose of compensating players.

I have yet to see an explanation of how FTP's decision to credit player accounts the moment the player initiated the depost and/or its decision to pay improper dividends somehow negated the phantom depositors' obligation to pay FTP.

FTP's lawyer said in court that only about $9 of the $128M in uncollected phantom deposits is presently matched by balances in player accounts. So, yeah, they are saying that over 90% of phantom deposits were other lost, paid in rake, transferred or withdrawn. I think the likelyhood that FTP's lawyer would lie to the court is quite small. The chance that FTP would lie to their lawyer is a bit higher, but I expect that the figures are generally accurate.