LOL, well, I'm def no big deal and what experience I do have is not on the same level that these decisions were made at, so perhaps you're right. I never really meant to get so hung up on that aspect of the debate but for some reason MR got the best of me.

Agree. In particular, I would love to hear from Phil Gordon's team. Howard indicates PG was desperate enough that he was sending demand letters for insolvency/ bankruptcy. The assumption is that this would not have led to the players being paid because somehow HL kept things afloat. My view is that it just delayed the stars deal that was always there. There is no reason, except legal exposure for the board, that an asset strip and sale via the DOJ that included player repayment could not have been initiated two summers ago.

I think some signaling from Stars (DN perhaps,) that others need to speak if they want a healthy Stars relationship going forward could be very helpful in this regard.

(Nitpick: Micro please stop saying DF did not catch Howard in a lie, see previous posts of mine and others. This is small bore. The company was constructed to protect Howard's lies, and there is no perjury charge at play here. The truth of his own words is plenty to show the lies.)

Oh jeez, now you got me feeling like a douche again. I am new to 2+2, hence the vacillation between dick and nice guy. Guess I need to clarify my persona.

welcome to 2p2 imo

IIRC HL said he thought 70k/month would be reasonable but Bitar continued to pay himself 200k. I don't think HL said Bitar stole and I don't think Bitar ever agreed to 70k.

As many here, I don't have the time/am too lazy to go back and double check.

This is a good example of how easily we all can mix up facts with our own speculation and I appreciate that DF is taking the time to write her articles. So far there was certainly material I have never read before (I think in #4 and #5) but there was also material I had forgotten about (e.g. Ferguson accounts) and where here articles pointed out things I would have missed otherwise.

From what I remember he didn't say 70k would be reasonable, but that he very reluctantly agreed to Ray paying himself 70k a month then found out latter that he paid himself 200k a month.

It's not clear how long he kept getting paid 200k a month for.

I think there are enough contradictions in what Lederer has said to understand he's lying about certain things. I believe Lederer deserves a lot more than to have someone say "that's not what I heard" which is what DF has basically said so far. Hopefully a time comes when someone can say that in a more appropriate setting.

It is my understanding that the series will have eight or more parts. There will be one part for each of the seven parts of "The Lederer Files" and then at least one more part to sum up with analysis and conclusions about the distortion of truth. (Please note that "distortion of the truth" might not mean outright lies, so much as misdirection and incompleteness. As for "new information", there has already been more than I expected, and I don't recall any being promised. IMO, some people are thinking that DF promised more than she actually promised. IOW they over-hyped themselves.

Thanks, I think, but I've come to the conclusion that these blogs are intended for an audience that might have watched the Lederer Files not knowing that he had distorted the truth, and not being a member of that audience, I've lost interest.

Bill Rini and others documented how implausible Howard's version of events was more than a month ago now, and guys like MicroRoller and DoTheMath put more writing effort into a single forum post than all six parts of this series would have required.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have not followed every article, court document and podcast about FTP since BF, who can't scroll down fast enough when they see a "TL;DR" wall of text on these forums that made the same speculative assumptions she does in her blogs, and for those people this series will be more than worth the wait.

I got a funny feeling part 7 is going to be titled Part 7a...and the good stuff will come in part 7h or so in another couple months or so.

Meh, go easy on DF here. It is a public service she is doing. With that said, I obviously understand why everyone has basically no patience left for all things FTP these days and so I get why people just want to have concrete dates for once. It's not her fault, but it is reality.

So.... Part 7? One week and still no article that ties everything together " and explains the significance" of all the other parts we spent time waiting for and reading.

To be fair, there is a lot of pressure on the remaining articles and she hasn't promised any timeline.

She may not have promised, but she did indicate a much different timeline.

I hope part 7 is just:

If this has been covered in another FTP thread, I apologize and would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.

Where was the CFO while all this was going on? Howard talks about trying to generate some special report about cash on hand vs player deposits, but wouldn't that type of info be readily seen in even the most basic of financial reports? And when the seizures and stuff were happening, wouldn't that also have been documented/accounted for in the financials? Likewise, when the CEO/board talks about distributions, isn't the first thing the CFO supposed to do is look at the numbers and advise whether there is an appropriate amount of cash on hand to give a distribution?

I guess I don't understand how the growing shortfalls could "surprise" everyone as to how large they were. Was the CFO in on some type of cover up with Bitar? Did they actively "cook the books" that they showed to the other board members?

It seems all the attention (rightfully so) has focused on HL and RB, but was the CFO indicted or somehow held accountable for this total mismangement of money?

Thanks.

The CFO must have been owned by Bitar. Waiting for court documents to surface showing the financial statements as prepared by the CFO that were submittted to HL, CF and the rest of the board..........

When we see those, then we will know who is full of ****.

The cfo was gil coronado. Oddly Howard doesn't talk about him much. From some reports he was very intimidating.

The CFO did not honor his obligation to the players.


The CEO did not honor his obligation to the players.


The Board did not honor its obligation to the players.


Btw, all Board members had significant ownership in the company. Collectively the Board may have owned over 35% of the company; however, I am open to correction on this figure. The Board plus Chris owned over 50% of the company.

As one former FTP player joked to me when I recently asked him if he knew much about the Tilt CFO:

"CFO, what CFO? We don't need no stinking real CFO! We are poker players!

Diamond Flush just does not understand the Tilt business model!"

The DoJ refers to the CFO, Gil Coronado, as "Unindicted co-conspirator #2" in the most recent superceding indictment against Bitar. He seems to be the person who supplied the false cash reports to the AGCC. Clearly he was in on the malfeasance.


To me, the more interesting quesions are:

• Where is the CFO now?
• Why hadn't he been charged either by the DoJ or by Alderney?

Chris was on the board. I think your first number was right. Something like 38% between Lederer, Bitar, Ferguson and First. The 4 board members.

The CFO makes me very curious. Because at a company the CEO isn't the dude doing the math, thats the accountants and the CFO.

So how did the accountants not alert everyone what was going on? the CFO must have told Ray.

Yeah, that's why I asked about the CFO. I was the COO of a small private software company that started with just having an outside accountant do our stuff once a month, and we grew to where we hired a real CFO. The guy had been the CFO at some subsidiaries of GE, and we were really lucky to get him.

But he was such an expert not only in accounting stuff, but also in all the legal aspects of money, and worked on an even par with our lawyers on that kind of stuff. We didn't make any sort of decision without the CFO going into detail about the costs/impact on our financial stability, etc. And we were just a small company.

It's just hard to imagine the FTP CFO not doing the same thing. TBH, listening to HL describe his role and lack of visibility of money stuff made me cringe. We were basically a tiny company learning things as we went, and still knew way more than he seems to have.

It just doesn't seem possible anyone could be both that naive on the one hand, but even more so that incurious as to what was going on with the company. Especially given the hundreds of millions of dollars being passed around.

That's simply because HL is FOS. Chris Ferguson and Erik Siedel both stopped receiving dividends. If they knew the company was having problems, then there is no way Howard didn't. I know they aren't related by blood, but he is the same person as Annie. Once the lie is out, it is the truth no matter what comes out after.

Side note:
You are killing me with this wait DF.