I'm not an attorney. I'm a retired banker, real estate agent/property developer and I've successfully played this type of game before, ie convincing a bureaucrat to get up off his ass and do something.

There are always tweaks and loopholes in our laws because they are written by lawyers who normally have no grounding or real world experience in waht the law deals with.

Enough said and if I sound arrogant thats because I am and proud of it.

After all I retired before I was 50,...lol.

Good luck to the stiffs that have to work for someone else and then get a small pension.

well i dont know if i understand this correctly...is this all you have to say or should we still msg you?Besides im not able to sort this law thinks out in english because im from germany and happy to speak and write a bit of this english language -_-

So whats my line now query acethiest , to hire a lawyer with you?for what im waiting long enough until some1 came up with this idea in the past...im still available for this option just tell me how we can work something out together maybe someone of you will be in europe for an EPT event in london or anywhere else , that cost i could afford and that would be an option for me to get some1 to know

(i hope everyone understand what i wanted to say , i just wrote it down like it came out of my brain ;D )

Msg me or contact me on irc #no-limit @ Quakenet nick powermihau or pm

With best regards

Michael L. from ugly germany

I guess this thread just went into PM mode.

I'll try and post a general explanation of what is going on later this afternoon at the moment I'm tryign to tract down my ID that I dropped in a grocery store.

The info is not earth shattering so don't bother checking in every few mins, but it will clear up what is going on.

Man! Of course I want to do everything I can to get my money back, though I didn't have that much in my account at Battlefield Poker. The problem is that I've had absolutely no idea what to do in a situation like this. Microgaming, the skins and many people in this thread says that all you can do is to sit tight and wait the liquidation process out and then act if 100 % is not recovered. I'm neither a jurist and english is not my language so I feel totaly lost in this mess. If the majority is agreeing what is needed to be done, of course I'm willing to act myself to get my money back. My knowledge is however, when it comes to these things, somewhat limited. But if the majority gives me an assignment to punch someone responsible on the mouth I guess that's something I definitely can do with some degree of accuracy.
So guys, what are going to do now?

Ok guys i do not know mellow personally but i have been talkign to him for months now and he seems legit. He has already put in tons of time researchign the situation.

He is not a lawyer, but a well versed business man who seems to have a very good hold of the situation. For those who want to know more about his credentials or learn about the poker forum he ran before I suggest you send him a pm and I'm sure he will be happy to prove he is not a scammer.

For those of you reading here is what we are hoping to do.

Gather at least 2 dozens players. These players would provide proof of debt (i.e. screenshots) to mellow so he could work on our behalf.

Mellow would like some compensation for his time and was hoping for 50 bucks from each player. I find this amount very reasonable, but obviously if you are only owed a few hundred this solution is sadly not for you. For those of us owed several thousand I think 50 dollars is nothing (one medium tourney buy in).

Why am I typing for mellow? I'm honestly not 100% sure but I think he was kinda offended by the negative reactino on the boards, plus people have ignored his suggestions in the past. He kinda has the attitude that he is happy to help for a small fee but doesn;t want to put up with crap (he sees himself as doing us a favour).

Mellow seems to think there is a very good chance something will come of this (ask him for details why he thinks this if you arn;t convinced)
Pls pm mellow if you are interested.

As you know I'm in for this
I think that everyone who has money of more then 1K stuck in this should go for it, because it's become kindof clear that waiting for the liquidators is pointless by now.

It's great that someone's showing some initiative!

I'm not sure what Mellows plan of action is, but isn't there a risk that because of his actions, the liquidators will spend even more time on this whole mess and they'll just bill us (sort of, but you know what I mean)?

That being said, I'm all for it; this waiting around has lasted long enough!

I pm'd mellow couple of days ago and he said to go with the suggestion put forward by ike, he said nothing about 50 bucks or what exactly he will/can do (50 bucks is very reasonable btw; I would even give 10% of my money if he would make possible that I get my money back).
Then I pm'd ike but didn't get a response until now.
What I/we don't need is another dissapointment after false hopes were being created.
Don't get me wrong, I don't say that this is fact here, but you sound so promising since last week and I still don't see progress or sth. new to the situation.

talked with acethiest on IM this morning about some of my concerns, figured I would just sum them up real quick for the thread as well:

- essentially someone with 40 posts is asking for 1200$ (assuming 24 people) up front, if this would happen in the marketplace and we got scammed, they'd laugh at us for being so reckless

- i suggested a pro bono solution where he could make even more money (as much as 5%?!)

- according to acethiest he wants the money up front because he is afraid we wont pay up, I'm not sure how realistic it is that people with 10k+$ wouldnt pay up after 6 months of this, our account balance alone and the fact that we play MSNL should give us at least some credibility in terms of paying up

- fwiw I'd suggest that someone trustworthy to both parties (maybe Ike?!) would escrow the money until its clear to us that mellowman has actually done something (be it successful or not). with a pro bono solution obviously only if successful.

Also I'd like more detail on what kind of personal information he would require from us. Acethiest just mentioned the screenshots of the account balance. I'd be willing to provide those, but I'm pretty sure I'd not be willing to provide any personal information beyond that, especially if "work on our behalf" should go as far as power of attorney.

I hope you are able to see this from my perspective and can fill in some of the blanks mellowman. I'm not trying to offend you in any way, I'm just a very careful person.

+1

$50 is as close to nothing as it'll get and I'd probably pay them out of end-of-tetherness, but I'd still consider them pretty much gone if coherent answers to Sonplz's questions were not given.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was trying to be sarcastic.

Hiring a lawyer to retrace the course of my investigations and then have him potentialy miss the obvious solution at a cost of $10-$15K is not the course I would follow.

Ill be in for whatever you guys are doing. Ive talked to acethiest before through pm. If you could pm me with excatly what were doing that would be great. Im happy to pay $50 or the 5% just let me know the whats wheres and whens.

Cheers

There appears to be enough interest in persuing this further on my part.

I will be setting up a new email addy to deal solely with the Tusk situation later today.

As far as info I will be requiring from those of you coming onboard:

Legal name
Address
MGS screenname
Poker Room where bux tied up and acc't#
email addy @ room
email addy for contact if diff from above
screenshots to prove balances/withdrawl requests
copies of any emails from poker room regarding balances/withdrawl requests

sonplz just for your info pro bono is a latin term loosely translated means "for free/no cost", what you are suggesting is a contigency fee of up to 5%.

If thats what you truly think is best I'll go for it, even provide the name of my lawyer because I would require the monies held in trust by him prior to starting any course of action.

If there's truly $10M tied up that works out to $500K not $50/person.

Thank you for replying.

You are correct, I misused the term. I never learned latin, I just had heard the term before and figured it meant "for free at first".

Anyways, I'm out then, I still have so much money online on other sites that my concerns for identity theft (as paranoid as it may be) far outweigh taking a shot at getting my 10k back.

Gl to everyone else trying this though

So to summerize:

Mellow doesn't have money involved, but he enjoys doing these sort of things and this sort of research. Looking for loopholes and stuff.
He believes the liquidators can't hold the players money, because of some precedent or some Australian law.
And now he basically wants to contact the liquidators with a list of some of the people involved and say something to the extend of " you have no right to hold the players money when the gambling/pokersite goed under, according to law xxxx or precedent xxxx, so give these players their money."

Something like that?
Sounds good, and some compensation for all that work and effort sounds very reasonable.

Ok new email addy is TuskRecovery@shaw.ca.

Those of you who are interested please send me your screenshots/emails with withdrawl requests/ denials to determine ifI can assist you.

I am in mellow, i am going to send u an email soon with my screenshots.

If we get our money back a 5% or even 10% compensation for all that work and effort sounds very reasonable.

I'm skeptical, but willing to see what you can do, Mellow. E-mail sent.

Hey,

Keeping in mind I have no reason to doubt mellowman is trying to help us out for a reasonable fee...what is to stop a middleman like mellowman from collecting all our funds on his behalf if we provide him with enough information? Also, the state the situation is in right now, it seems this risk might still be better than our chances without his actions. Is there anyone that can vouch for mellowman or mellowman can you provide us some reasons to feel secure providing you with all of this info?

Thank you for all your help.

Indeed. I like the idea but the info he's looking for could easily be used to scoop the money owed without us even knowing it has happened until it's too late. It just seems like a huge risk to be honest.

No offence Mellowman, I'd like to pay you the $50 to get this show on the road but for the moment I'm extremely paranoid.

No reason to feel secure or insecure.

The monies are held by SimsPartners and will be disbursed by them to the registered stakeholders. I'm not sure how I could successfully impersonate the players involved. I would be suspicious if all of a sudden player's from around the world moved to Victoria BC and were all residing in my 2 bedroom condo. I think it might be a little crowded.

My course of action is with the government and to coerce the government into forcing Sims to change the status of the players based on the Player's Protection Act which Sims has been blatantly disregarding.

I guess I would be a little paranoid myself if I had a bunch of my roll that was in limbo and someone who professes to have found a magic solution showed up on an anonymous message board.

I'm not paranoid one bit. Slay the dragon Mellowman! Thanks for offering us a little bit of hope.

I feel like his motives are pure here guys, but to each their own.

If we do nothing , all the money are going to the Sims anyways.
might as well give mellowman307 a chance to get some back for us.

Yes but didn't tusk operate under Vatuu or w/e law?