ftp wasn't involved in the deal with jungle at all

thats only if the liquidator is a good one. sometimes they take ridiculous fees or make crazy decisions. for example say people from italy would be required to pay a 10$ processing fee. clearly then i should draw and pay x% of ppl 100% on the dollar (instead of sending some people 2$ and it costing the 'fund' 12). if there's 0 processing fee i should just pay everyone their 1/2cent per dollar or w/e. likely the reality will be somewhere in between, and i will decide whats the best and most fair, or if thats not abundantly clear i'll leave it up to a popular vote of sorts. it'll be as transparent a process as possible.

Tom,
You've said a couple of times that the hole/shortfall/backlog and its aftermath were what brought down FTP. I don't think this is the only thing that happened. When all is said and done, the shortfall will likely cost the company $119M. It likely peeked at around $160M before they started collecting (or a bit after, since they continued to accept these deposits AFTER they started collecting...).

The DOJ says that FTP owed players $390M in March but only had $60M on hand. I would guess that the shortfall was in the $140Mish range at that time, though I don't know for sure. That still leaves $190M unaccounted for. Note that this is before the 4/15 seizures. Where did that money go?

well the huge issue is that its very hard to be collected, so its not worth much. but if someone had a legit claim that every us citizen owed them 1$ u'd still happily pay 100k for it hoping to bink off some new policy or w/e, even though u clearly wouldn't pay 200m. again the reality will be somewhere in the middle.

haven't talked to chris, rafe or ray since black friday (texted with ray for a few days following so april 18ish or w/e for him).

to howards credit he's been answering questions and answering the phone etc. throughout. that does make me trust him way more and think the chance hes clean (or at least thinks he is) is much higher than most people think.

i thought it was the shortfall all along. i think the seizures (and voluntary ones in europe) were another decent amount. im really curious where u heard the 140 as i was always led to believe it was more. i think a bunch was siezed but still not 190.

edit: we sure the doj's number is right? i was told a slightly smaller one by a bunch of people at ftp. maybe the doj is including ftp point liability or something like that?

no idea but ive heard this a lot too

he was convinced that the potential investor who i previously mentioned who was looking at the company from when the la times story ran (and a little before) until 2ish weeks ago was likely to buy the company. he was some part misled some part unlucky and some part wrong. how big those parts are is a question im still searching to answer.

im pretty sure they did have all the money in 'cash' as of 2008. their definition of cash might've been a little off, but was still close enough to only warrant a slap on the wrists. saying it was segregated accounts and being wrong is pretty criminal, but the doj didn't include that statement- can someone dig up that thread? I was inclined to believe it was segregated accounts, and never would've joined with ftp had i not believed this (and would've left at any time i found out obv).

i definitely don't trust howard, just like i wouldn't anyone in the position hes in. i question everything he tells me- but so far i've found he hasn't outright lied to me once. he might've danced around a few questions and definitely told a few half truths, but no outright lies.

im still very unhappy with a ton of his actions, and am very disappointed (i took my dad to meet him since my dad was in vegas and i had to pickup uniforms n stuff from howard before the uso tour we went on apr 8-14 and didnt really have a bad thing to say about the guy other than him being a nit). ive thought of this a few times and it makes me feel pretty sick every time.

That said i know he feels super terrible that all this happened, but that only means so much.

These numebrs are before the amount seized. That's why the DOJ specifically talked about March. The 390M is for March and is higher than what you've heard because of the withdrawals that happened between April 15th and June 29th.

FWIW, the DOJ seized and froze less than $60M on Black Friday. I'm working on confirming the exact number so I can make it public. That's fairly obviously teh case, though, since their liquid assets were only $60M in March.

not sure. i found out about the player hole in late april, don't remember when i found out the reason but it was sometime in the next few days or week. I remember being super disgusted. Was with my gf and one of my best friends and they both can attest how insanely in shock i was upon hearing (i didn't explain to them, but they were able to guess a rough idea jus based on the place and my face)

i probably have a number after a bunch of withdrawls then (after black fri). its way more manageable imo, and pretty silly the southern district wouldnt spell this out (im still really happy with them for today tho).

a ton of people borrow $$ in the poker world, and a huge amount of ftp pros borrowed at one time or another. it makes sense that if i showup to a random ept ftp would have enough cash on hand to cover my buyin, since they have so many other pros that theyll always be trying to convince to go. likewise with tv cashgames etc. that said the let the loans get a bit out of hand, and the guy before rich who was managing it was pretty ridiculous in some of his loans. rich seemed to do a pretty decent and managed job at keeping the cost to ftp way down and the longterm profit up a bit.

for example obviously ftp should be fine loaning me 50k if i was getting paid in 2 days by them, but obviously they shouldnt loan people 3m$ who they were paying 200k/year. they were unfortunately very close to the 2nd one, and should've been somewhere in between.

have some stuff to do next few hours, hopefully noah and sgt rj among others can move questions they think are relevant (or that a lot of other people think even if they dont) and i'll answer when i come back.

the only way the ftp lineup gets out of it is if us (and european) player funds are returned. so the doj finally has clearly put their priorities in line. I said i'd take 5%- i think the real chance is over 10% to get 100c/$ (or at least 98/99- mebbe some accounting trickery), but i already have a huge % networth bet on it.

i dunno. i've been advised a bunch not to post here b/c its opening up a legal can of worms, but im fully convinced i've done nothing wrong and that that'll holdup in a court (hopefully the 12 people i get werent the type who failed jury duty).

Think it'd be hard for anyone to make a case since i owned no % and am paying back every $ i made. if i owned a % i'd be pretty ***** tightlipped, altho id like to think i'd have guaranteed a large amount of $$ already.

i stopped wearing ftp badge in early may (i wore to ept madrid b/c i thought a deal was right about to be signed and figured id try n not be selfish and cause anything that could mess it up).

its hard to trust anyone whos on the board of a company that is in the process of defrauding people for hundreds of millions. i trust howard way more than id expect to trust anyone in this situation, but i still question everything he says. haven't seen a lie yet, although quite a few dodges and some half-truths.

Stars didn't accept echecks from states where there weren't processors to accept echecks.

(This isn't strictly true. Stars had a very tiny shortfall caused by screwing this up on the boundary--e.g. a payment processor pulls out of a state and a few deposits squeeze through that aren't processed. But, it's basically true.)

not gonna answer anymore questions on details of investors jus for game theory balance . kind've need to keep those indetities private. but no the one who was very interested for 2months that i mentioned before wasnt related to any american casino i know of.

i stayed b/c i thought the management was very incentivized to pay the players (if not they go to jail). i still believe that and don't regret that choice. i think it would've been very selfish to leave.

i owe ftp less than i was paid, don't really wanna go into more detail unless u give me a reason why it matters or a lot of people seem to think it does. to me it seems like it only opens up a can of worms for myself while doing no-one else any good.

can u post a buncha ur replies/ questions in the other thread too. i dont think it should be about me- just about getting as much info out as possible, and you clearly have a lot. also that will hopefully encourage others to join in as well.

wanna know my river checkraising range too? sorry i wanna keep this stuff private for now unless i see a good reason for answering

i wasn't sure what to do about this for the whole time after i found out. i was under nda so my only option was going to the southern district (and probably having tilt shut down). i thought many times about this and thought the likelihood of tilt paying out was high enough, and the new deposits small enough, that it was worth waiting.

these situations aren't super cut and dry- look at greece as an example. also imagine if people ran scared in 08 and busted bank of america or jpm (prolly woulda been good but still). that said people should've mentioned the shortfall at aig earlier. it was a really complicated decision, and i sought a lot of advice and thought about it a lot.

They didn't legally charge them with running a Ponzi scheme; they just said it in a press release.

FTP very clearly doesn't fit the definition of the Ponzi scheme, and there are lots of other laws that allow for clawback other than laws about Ponzi schemes. They were just choosing sexy words for their press release.