I'm not a fanboy of his, but have been itt n been more on the MarcoQJ type side of ****...but...I mean if I ran a homegame, I'd certainly invite him if he wanted to come. I'm not opposed to having a fish at the table. Will I invite him out back to smoke a blunt with me? Nope. But I surely wouldn't feel bad if I stacked him while playing him in a game of pokes.

I don't think anyone is denying Howard's role in any of it. I don't think anyone is trying to downplay it. But what more can he do now? He no longer owns the company. It's not his responsibility to pay anyone back. Everyone is complaining about how he should at least wait till US players are paid back, why? It's not his fault the US players haven't been paid back yet (Stars gave DOJ Money, DOJ is now stalling on us)

Yes, he's a piece of **** scumbag for stealing money, but..how is he worse than the guy who spent 15 years in prison for an attempted murder or aggravated battery charge? Why aren't those people all being banned form the game? Certainly they pose a larger danger to society than Howard ****ing Lederer.

Again, not denying he ****ed up, but, he can't do anything about it now. Even if he could, nobody would forgive him. So just let the dude live his life. If you choose to partake n play with him, then good for you. If you don't, good for you as well.

Ban Lederer and DiVella imo.

why not players and regs just collude with info against Howard, then take his money? wouldn't that do more justice than banning him

how about if the players really care enough they simply don't play in lederer's games?

It's not about comparing who is shady, it's about him STEALING HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS STRAIGHT FROM POKER PLAYERS. If you wanna make stupid comparisons...there's a guy who beat up another dude who owns a pool hall. Then the assailant is playing pool at his joint every day - do you think it would fly?? It just doesnt work like that.

It could be different if he was honest about how things went, gave the stolen money back etc. but he just tries to lie his way out of the whole ordeal and never admitted of doing anything wrong. He's playing with stolen money amongst the people he stole from. It has nothing to do with casinos having to ban different people who have shady pasts. No, no no. This is a clear case of a life ban from anything related to poker and I truly hope he will serve time, as he deserves.

Most of these arguments are poor but the one in bold is the one I'm tired of hearing. If the money wasn't stolen from players in the first place players wouldn't have to be waiting for Stars/DOJ to pay them back.

At the very least Lederer as a managing member of FTP and being on the BOD should have been looking out for his company, his own and other members interests and that of his players by making sure the company wasn't being looted. Other information has come out that makes it look like he might have known well before he said or might have even been a part of it.

Sorry, but this is the worst post in the thread. Ridicule him, ban him...fine. But the last thing poker needs is more fraud/collusion/thievery.

This already happens by text message in the same 5/10 games.

Look, I don't like witch hunts before someone has been proven guilty by a court of law; neither by this forum nor trial by twitter/facebook. This is a massive 21st century issue.

If in time it turns out that my instincts are completely wrong then fine, I've made a mistake. In the meantime for players to start petitioning for him not to be able to do what he wants to do wherever he choses is blatantly wrong and you must know this.

Please don't mistake me, I am not defending Howard in anyway whatsoever, what I am defending is an individuals freedom to do whatever they please within the law until such a time as they are charged. Then it is for a judge to decide the punishment to fit the crime, not a poker forum.

I may be extraordinarily naive and gullible, but I don't think so. I have listened to the Lederer files, have read all the diamond flush analysis and have yet to read or hear one piece of watertight, damning evidence that will put him behind bars. Maybe the evidence exists and maybe the DOJ are just sitting on it, waiting for what?

The latest DF interview with Chad Eli is just counter-productive as it just doesn't prove that Howard ever had a meeting with a prominent payment processor anywhere apart from a dinner party and a Jay-Zee concert! It's just grasping at straws. Do you really believe that they would discuss intricate details of payment processing possibilities in front of their respective wives and friends? Of course they wouldn't.

I might add that I find it astonishing that he wasn't informed that they were in a $270M hole before the 17th April, but I believe it when he says he didn't know. Someone definitely knew and my hope is that those individuals will be punished for their deceit.

If it is proven beyond any shadow of doubt that he knew things were screwed up before he was told by Bitar on April 17th or whenever it was and that he knowingly covered it up and was sanctioning payments to owners including himself, then he will go to jail and will deserve it.

Until such a time I am entitled to believe what I believe.

John, in this post, you completely shift the goalposts and backtrack away from most of the content from your first post. Many of us share your belief that Howard should not be banned from private casino's such as Aria. Many of us are strong proponents of individual freedom.

However, you had this to say about (and in defense of) Howard's character:

You have to understand that the above quotes are straight up nonsense to anyone who has been honestly and diligently following the facts of FTP's scandal.

Nick DiVella ‏@NickDiVella

Grinding football today then back to Aria for some pokers

Way to stick it out for the petition and boycott..........yawn

They're not the one's objecting.

Look, I can't claim to have been 'diligently' and 'honestly' (whatever that means in the context) following all the 'facts' on 2+2 as I am only an occasional visitor.

However I stand by what I said in that first post and it may well be 'straight up nonsense' to you, but I am just speaking from my own experience and understanding of the situation.

I would respect your opinions and I'm sure that they've been formed through exhaustive research. However, I'm also at liberty to suggest that you may well have been misled or misinformed, which I find slightly more acceptable than just to call them 'nonsense'. As I actually don't know what your opinions are or indeed their source, I stand silent.

It may well be that I am completely wrong and that he and Chris knew everything, all the time and that minutes of meetings will be brought to a court and they will be tried and convicted. If that's the case then I will be surprised and accept my own misjudgement.

In the meantime I'm quite at liberty to express my belief that they didn't know.

The casino is a privately owned institution. Under the law, they are free to ban Howard for any reason they want, or no reason whatsoever. This is completely lawful, as are people lobbying these private institution to exercise their right to ban him.

Your belief that guilty people go to jail, and the fact that someone isn't in jail is proof that they are innocent, has to be once of the most naive things I have ever seen written.

What about after April 17th when FTP were still accepting ROW deposits?

That's an interesting point. What would you have done?

I think I would have continued to operate what was to all intents and purposes an incredibly successful company and tried to get an investor on board immediately to shore up the horrendous shortfall, then find out what the **** happened and make sure it could never happen again. What was the other option... liquidation with no hope for anyone.

Let's be honest what are the chances poker players as a group will ever boycott anything that involves playing poker?

Half the people on this forum would play at a site run by Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson tomorrow if it meant that they could play online poker again.

fyp

If thats the case, lets ban Ivey from all poker rooms as well until FTP pays US players. Same with Gus, Durrr, PA, Jen Harman, and any other member of Team FTP that received any sort of money from FTP over the last 2 years. They're JUST as guilty as Howard if you're only looking at it from the perspective that because of him, we have no monies. It's because of those guys too, because they took a salary/loans/etc. It's not just Howard's fault.

Yes, I agree, he is the one who should get the majority of the blame, but how much can he do now? Will Banning him from Aria or anywhere else make you get your money faster?

Like I said, I'd gladly welcome someone in a game if I felt I'd beat him out of his money. So I'd be ok with him on my tables. If you aren't, then thats fine too. But there isn't a need to make his life hell when he simply can't do anything about it anymore.

You are entitled to your opinion and having input from someone like you is always welcome. Since you don't post here much understand that people will voice their disagreements, sometimes even when they're agreeing with you

I think that wanting to find out exactly what happened is a natural reaction. I was surprised that Lederer seemed so opposed to that notion. Did you think that was odd?

You said you think you would have kept operating the business (taking deposits) until you could get an investor. When you were running the EPT, if you didn't have big sponsors and the buy-ins weren't covered by insurance, and someone stole all the money for the first few tournaments, you would continue to accept buyins for the other tournaments, and use those buyins to pay previous winners of earlier events hoping you'd come up with the money before anyone tried to cash a check? That's essentially what FTP was doing.

It's not exactly the same. There's quite a big difference. Ivey, Harman, and other owners did not run the company or make decisions. The board of directors in most companies also has to approve loans. If the company didn't have money to loan out it's not the person asking for the loan's fault. Especially when it seems a lot of those loans were tied to marketing the company. If your bank gives out a $100bln loan and it didn't have the reserves to cover it and they give it to someone with questionable ability to pay and it winds up bankrupting them when they can't pay and you lose your non-insured accounts, are you going to blame the bank or the borrower? Maybe you do? A lot of people were mad when someone making $30k/yr couldn't pay off the mortgage for the $750k house they bought during the housing boom but didn't criticize the bank.

It's not about making his life hell. It's the safety issues I mentioned previously but also it's about not putting the other players that suffered because of FTP/Lederer through hell. People that lost money with FTP are victims of a crime. Having to see someone who was heavily involved with and profited from that crime splash that money around practically in front of you must suck.

The last sentence is painting the picture to be too bleak unless you mean no hope for any of the owners, which is probably true and probably why they put more players at risk in the hopes of profiting in the future.

Stars bought FTP for their balances, even after the hole was dug deeper. So if you stop on April 17th or thereabouts (probably much sooner, you're giving a lot of benefit of the doubt that the day he found out was that late), you look for an investor/buyer and go from there.

Once the hole is that deep, there really is no option to just carry on. They weren't making that up in a year, or two years, especially not after black friday's charges.

The whole thing stinks of a bunch of desperate degenerates holding on hope that they can still make a buck and not giving a damn about the hugely negative impact their decisions have on their players. You just can't take money under false pretenses from thousands of people in hopes that you can fill a few hundred million dollar gap in a few years. What would the other owners say when they stopped receiving disbursements? What about if a buyer came in and put up 100s of millions, the owners would get nothing. What would they do then? They wouldn't sue Ray over this? The company? I just don't see how this gap could've been kept secret under any realistic scenario and how continuing to operate was even an to anybody who doesn't totally disregard the people you're taking money from.

If it was really Ray's doing, they should've stopped everything, looked for a buyer and charged Ray on various crimes/clawed back some of his money to help cover the hole, combined with an investor/investors. How you can trust the guy that supposedly is to blame for all of this, the guy that supposedly told you nothing about the shortfall, that is beyond me. It makes no sense John and that's one of many reasons why people don't believe Howard's version of when he found out about the shortfall.

This, and the rest of the post around it, is absolutely right. Even if Howard et al thought that further defrauding their customers was in those customers best interest, it's still not the right thing to do. Trying to paint it as an altruistic decision is ridiculous, but even if it were, it would have been wrong.