Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

More like "I gave Howard Lederer the opportunity to clarify his statements in an interview and he backed out. Thus I will be presenting the facts as I know them to be without his input or clarification."

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Don't go down that road replying to trolls. Any criticism of DF gets met with harassment. Back in January I got accused of being a troll, a shill and either accused of being hdemet or implied I was like him, I forget which. Once you start replying to trolls it's easy for your argument to deteriorate. Had I known yolo was previously banned I would have ignored his ad hominems and avoided my temp ban earlier today.

After the reference to hdemet was made I went back to read some of what he had written and it in hindsight it was some of the most insightful information posted in those threads. As far as I could tell his problem was replying to the trolls personal attacks.

You don't come across as a douche - just under-informed about the FTP situation.

Yeah, you have seen audited statements, but they weren't for all of FTP. They were for Pocket Kings. FTP was an organization comprising a number of companies incorporated in several different countries. Player money was deposited with the licenced companies: Filco, Vantage, and Orinic. These were incorporated in Alderney, and were not owned by Pocket Kings. Therefore Pocket Kings' financial statements didn't show anything about player cash on hand. Alderney doesn't require independent audits of their companies, not even ones licenced to provide gambling and to hold player money. I wonder why not? (Not really.) The AGCC relied primarily on unaudited monthly cash-vs.-deposits reports obtained directly from the licensees. Until they require independent varification of financial reports and segregation of player funds, they should not be treated seriously as a regulator. I am glad to see that Stars has moved FTP's licence to the IoM.

The whole convoluted structure of the FTP group was created when Howard was President and one of only two managing members of the beneficial owner: Tiltware LLC. His claims of ignorance about how Pocket Kings was structured and run do not sound credible to me. He and Ray were responsible for setting it up, putting ownership of sub-parts in Ray's name and having Ray as the Key Individual certificate-holder.

That is correct.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

QFT

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Just becuse 40% of the fine they first asked for was for FT does not make 40% of the fine for FT. You can't get blood of a stone, and FT didn't have the money to pay a fine, or the players so they just gave up all there assets.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Any word on the next installment??

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

HL tells the story of this near the end of the 2+2 pokercast.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

I have never been banned from any forum, reacting to critics/conspiracy theories is useful in this case as it help prevent people to fall for HL version of the story.

Everyone's got a few sides to this story, by reading andys interview and listening to Howard's interviews I think there's got to be some truth in what Howard is saying

I don't think we will ever know what went on, who knew who didn't know

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

I absolutely agree, there is definitely some truth and info to gather from this interview, but HL has been pretty good in this PR exercise and we can see on this thread that he managed to fool many posters.

More specifically:
-Pretending that according to the operating agreement he had no more responsibility than the other owner.
-Pretending that the absence of audit/control was just a natural course of action.
-Pretending that what took place was a deal where, thanks to his and rays work, the company was sold to pokerstars which should let him and the board of the hook for the dividends they received and every **** they did.
-Pretending that he did not know anything and did his best to get the player paid back (while never showing any intent to give back any of the dividend, that's hilarious).

Truth is, this story is pretty complex and many posters are not familiar at all with the way business are run (which is pretty much the opposite of the average 2p2er opinion), that's why it is important to clarify a lot of misconception.

What he admitted and is not debated is that from april the 15th to june the 29th, this guy (and other) made the decision to misrepresent to us the security of our funds to convince us to keep depositing money that they could not pay back. This is the part of ftp existence that the DOJ refered to as a ponzi scheme.

This guy properly and consciously ****ed us, those who saved us were the DOJ (yeah 2p2, those who you have been blaming all along), we cant let him get away pretending that he was the good guy, just victim of some other's mistakes.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

The most tilting thing about the current situation by far is the soap opera nature in which these pieces are being released.

First, with Pokernews and their daily drips of interviews which served no purpose other than to frustrate. Just release it all, this isn't a TV show.

Diamond seems to have jumped onto that bandwagon with this drip feeding nonsense for her expose series.

If you've got something to say, just put it out there.

You've obviously gotten everything written and ready to go Miss Flush so why the purposeful serialization by releasing them in parts throughout the week?

Just post them all and give the community what they deserve instead of further tilting them by forcing everyone into waiting for what you suggest will be the truth.

Everyone wants the truth, just give it to them instead of this boke inducing attempt at following Pokernews' lead of further pissing off already pissed off players.

The attempt to build tension for the next part is at best, self service and at worst - downright ignorant to the players you claim to be fighting for.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Thanks, I'll listen to it later.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

As an alternate method of assessing the value of the asset:

At some point $10m per month of distributions was deemed to be a decent run rate, and HL suggested that 60% of the business was international. As a first pass guess then, you can put a figure of annual profitability of the international business alone as ~$70m p.a. (60% of $120m).

IIRC HL suggested that revenues had risen dramatically since the $10m per month rate was instituted, suggesting perhaps that the company should be more profitable than that. OTOH, if it were, then you would have expected that the company would have been able to cover the phantom deposits and DOJ seizures. If you wanted to try to estimate how much extra the company could have been making, then you could try to find out total seizures plus phantom deposits less missing player funds. If this figure is very large, then it could materially increase the guess of FTP profitability.

Network effects mean that profitability of 60% of the firm is probably not 60% of the full figure. Finally I'd be very surprised if the player endorsements/patch deals/appearance fees system wasn't really profit distribution by another means, and thus there would be reasonable scope to improve profitability in the right hands.

What multiple you put on the revenue stream depends on your view of the stability/growth/future legal status of the industry and something to do with the competitive situation - in particular the firm is probably worth materially more to pokerstars than it is to any one else

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Before I made my post I tried to actually find a corporate structure so I could look at what owned what and where it was incorporated. I say this because ultimately there is a point at which whichever auditor signed on the reporting pack for group consolidation has to take responsibility for the fact that they didn't do a full audit.....

Without being sarcastic I would personally love to see the ownership structure of the companies if that is actually known/ available anywhere?

No part 2 yet? Wonder if HL's lawyer got to her...

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

Does anyone know H.L explanation of how Eric Seidel could be owed 4.5 million in distributions without it raising huge "red flags". That seems like 2 years worth of distributions...

Like if you can't afford to pay there must be something wrong? Eric Seidel seems like a really smart and really honest guy, why did he not ever make a fuzz to anyone? And I assume he must have asked, what was he told??? was he lied to....

Just to be 100% clear. I think there is like zero chance Eric Seidel did anything wrong.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

It wasn't that they couldn't afford to pay, Seidel chose not to receive them, perhaps for tax reasons, maybe just didn't want the wife going on a spending spree, maybe he wanted to buy up more shares of the company from the 'cash broke' crowd, there are a lot of possible reasons for not receiving distributions if you don't need the money.

Re: Diamond Flush Article: The Distortion of Truth from the Lederer Files
 

It sounds good except that the distribution rate appear to have been set absolutely randomly... they distributed 450m$ in dividend and ended up with a 350m$ hole... So you cant base anything on this figure.

**Part 2 From Diamond Flush**
 

http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...files-part-ii/

Very short, Nothing new. But it is out and available to read.

Re: **Part 2 From Diamond Flush**
 

Been checking all morning. Thanks for the update/ link.

I have a take on DF that will probably get me bashed a little bit on here. I listened to both of 2+2's interviews with her (the first back in April and the most recent). Both times I was sorely disappointed in her abilities as an investigative journalist. I would need to go back and listen to both interviews to remember specifically what she said, but I found myself thinking that most of what she said was obvious and she would give her opinion a lot, as if it were fact. I guess I did not value her contribution to this issue as much as most of you do.

I also found her comments laughable about HL backing out of her "promised interview". She goes on and on as if HL destroyed her career by backing out of this interview. I have no doubt that HL probably agreed to do an interview with DF; however, these things happen. If DF was reputable journalist, she would understand this and not lash out with such venom when HL canceled on her. My opinion is that she came across as a somewhat crazy woman, which I also felt a few times listening to her interviews.

I am disturbed with the FT issue as much as anyone and believe HL knows more than what he has let on. However, I am not convinced DF was the most qualified person in trying to unravel the truths and lies. I believe she loves the fame that has come from all of this and is trying to milk it, trying to leverage off the emotions of those that have been impacted significantly from FT and its owners/management.

Re: **Part 2 From Diamond Flush**
 

I'll tie part 2 in and discuss later.

Re: **Part 2 From Diamond Flush**
 

even tho she says multiple times that the importance of certain things will be discussed later i just fail to see a lot of new facts in her articles so far. I know it will be a series of articles but until now its basically just a summary of what Howard said in the pokernews interview...

Re: **Part 2 From Diamond Flush**
 

The very first article specifically addressed this problem and said to please withhold judgement until you've seen all seven parts. If you didn't like part 1 or 2, I would highly recommend NOT reading parts 3-6 until all seven parts are out.