Given Bitar's history of misleading his customers, I'll proceed cautiously with my optimism with regards to how casually he's referring to Stars taking over.

That said, I'll use it here: ONE TIME!!!!

(a few $K in the balance)

you are all reading too much into it. Lobster prices are $4.99 / lb in NY. Nothing more to see here

Fantastic. Looking forward to more news over the coming hours and days.

so very true

Bitar email on or about march 23, 2008 (according to the new indictment):

is that forum post in #15 of the indictment a 2+2 post?


Also, count 5 of the indictment.

The indictment is an interesting read. Pages 29 and subsequent outline the forfeiture of all FTP assets, which could of course be setting up a PS deal with DOJ. Also, there is an added wire fraud charge relating to telling us that our funds are in segregated accounts and "safe and secure."

On a side note, I've tried to be rational throughout this, and just hope I get my money back, but after reading that all I can think is **** those ****ing mother****ers. How they could run a huge cash printing business like that so badly and negligently for so long is mind boggling.

Ohhh I like this one too:

"On or about April 20th, 2011 Full Tilt Poker reached an agreement with the Department of Justice providing that the company could immediately return all of the money owed to United States players. Full Tilt Poker did not then repay its customers as its "message to U.S. customers" claimed it was trying to do, and instead issued a press release on April 20th, 2011 asserting that "numerous legal and jurisidictional issues" prevented immediate payment. In truth and in fact, however, Full Tilt Poker could not return player money because, as Bitar knew, the player money had been spent by the company and distributed to its owners."

This is really a juicy read.

juicy read indeed:
#28:

OH MY ****ING GOD

Looks like FTP is responsible to hand in 1billion, pokerstars is responsible for the other 1.5.

#51, a. 1. and 2. of the indictment.

Maybe I'm wrong. Havent finished reading.

edit: oh yeah you might be right, #54(a).

It is quite possible that this superceding indictment will be sufficient enough to allow lawyers to attempt to claw back all dividends paid to all owners, without needing to show that any individual owner participated in the criminal misconduct.

54. Bitar, Burtnick, and defendants shall forfeit.. blah blahblah ( cliffs - everything they own)
54a. A sum of money of at least 2.5$ billion in US currency.

hahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahaha

Those are near the amounts they were originally asking for. It will probably be closer to 750 million to 1 billion total in the settlement, as previously reported. Clearly, FTP does not have $1 billion. If they did, this superseding indictment probably wouldn't have happened.

Can anyone give a cliffs on who NELSON BURTNICK is and how he got to where he was with the company??

Anyone know who the defendants are? I saw a list of like 15 companies, but I want names besides bitar. Ive skimmed through most of the Indictment, but maybe I skipped through that part.

Director of payment processing

They may give owners the chance to return dividends they approved for themselves knowing the company could not afford it. But i suspected that shareholders who received payment may not be required to return them

I believe the indictment said that he was a previous director of finance for pokerstars.

So us government will get maybe 50mill of the 2.5 billion they are expecting? lololol

The indictment is an interesting read. This settles once and for all the claims that FTP only went down because of the DOJ, these scumbags were going busto no matter what, still paying themselves millions after BF when they were hundreds on millions short on player funds. These guys are ****.

Does anyone else feel like they just cut and paste the whole indictment from Subject Poker/DF poker and 2p2?

I disagree, and here's why.

Salary will not be clawbackable. But members of the LLC receiving dividends is not salary, it's return on investment (even if no capital contribution was necessary upon being made a member of the LLC). This isn't "shareholding" in the way you buy stock in IBM over the NYSE, and those aren't the applicable rules.

This situation now is much more akin to how the Madoff trustee was able to successfully claw back money from Madoff investors who Madoff actually gave distributions to (e.g., the owners of the New York Mets). The Wilpons did not cause the Madoff scheme to run afoul of the law, but they earned dividends from Madoff, and thus benefited from the illegality, in the same way that all the minor owners of FTP did.

Not necessarily. If they anticipate the government will eventually come in and kill the goose that lays the golden egg, it actually makes some sense (not morally, just in a money accumulation way) that they'd set up their business like this.