Pretty easy to check this yourself if you have doubts about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ition_treaties

But aren't they? UB: rigged, AP: rigged, FTP: scam, various small networks: scam.

On the plus side of the ledger we have: PokerStars (serving the US) and merge. The general consensus among us players is that PS is competent enough that they can get a great ROI honestly. Merge?

2+2 post quoted in doj indictment is pretty lulz.

Otherwise it is the standard divide and conquer.

Well, he probably does, just wanted it noted for the NVG crowd that sometimes likes to draw unfounded conclusions, that he's not required to do so, and certainly 20 years after leaving a firm, anyone would be extremely hard pressed to demonstrate even the appearance of impropriety.

But if he has always done so in the past, then yeah, I see no reason he wouldn't do so now.

Yes, but I felt it was the original posters responsibility.

Sometimes its hard to see what is going on in First Class. Wonder if they had Lobster on the way over for lunch?

zero

So presumably it says that he lied to owners...(possibly Lederer and Ferguson?...*conjecture*) about the amount of cash on hand...and was stating that it was imperative to keep the status quo...(maintain 100% of player funds that they currently had..even though he knew they didn't have cash flows anything close to that)

If that's the case...it puts the onus on Bitar alone and lets the owners off the hook to a point....HL and CF just say "we were told that 100% of player funds were in the bank by RB."

That could explain why HL and CF haven't needed to surrender to law enforcement at this point.

If the conference call was recorded as they state in the indictment....there could be alot of smoking guns in there.

Yeah I get that and I assume he might be the type to buy out all of first class that way he was by himself(with lawyer) when this all happened. So maybe there is no video.

This is like buying pot from someone and then condemning his "immoral" actions. (Because after all, a few stooges held a vote and signed a piece of paper.. he should have gotten the memo that it's immoral now.. forget my part in it though.)

please pay us so I can stop reading these ridiculous comments lol

I have a friend at CNBC, it's already in pre-production.


What value does Stars get in acquiring the FTP platform? I would think it's in the 85-95% of FTP players with Stars accounts. Is it possible for them to license the platform out to whomever gets a US license?

After reading the indictment, I think not only jail time for ALL shareholders but also banhammer from community FOREVER

in before Haystacks with same info Thanks for your concern

link to the indictment please.

OP gets updated any time there is something significant.

Its now in the OP

Please don't use the bolded phrase while the UB mess is still floating out there

http://t.co/2YmJrFXu


legit

That fat ******* didnt want the gravy train to end and I'll assume since theres an unidentified player high up in the food chain that its Jesus and he rolled bitar for immunity

I rolled my eyes at these people so many times, and I still sort of instinctively roll my eyes at people when they make this argument now. But, basically everyone outside of the poker world who heard about my poker stuff had this exactly right: Pretty much everyone who heard about the shady sites where I kept my money immediately asked why they didn't just run off with my money because it's such an obvious question.

It's a nice reminder of how powerful groupthink is at completely killing off common sense.

Some of the mods have also been nice enough to gather together some of the more important posts in this thread in Poker Headlines. That's probably a good place to check for any big updates and/or link people who won't want to deal with the mess of an NVG thread.

I am old enough to have played on Starlight gaming which also had a ponzi type scandal some 10-15years ago with some of the sites it's software was licensed to. The reality unless the industry gets regulated we are vunerable to these types of issues and hope that good companies like PS continue to be sound.

#26 in the indictment is cold blooded.

You may have to pay $5 a hand for regulated poker. My as well be unregulated. In France it is like a 7% rake. I would rather pay less rake and take the risk.

That's all well and good, but without government, in this instance, and you have 4-5 figures on FTP, and they're tits up, you're ****ed. Wanna calculate pot odds on that?

So, the fact that bitar turns himself him doesnt help the ftp/stars case, but it is a sign that it is going well. Correct?

What about the pros who repped the site but were not shareholders? They promoted a ponzi scheme too.

What about the indication in the indictment that the owners were misled by Bitar and CC-1 about the way player funds were protected? There's no indication in the indictment that the non-owner endorsers were also lied to. Doesn't that make the non-owner endorsers even more deserving to go to jail IYO?

Just to be clear, I don't think any of these people deserve to go to jail, on the currently available evidence, but I do think that any pro who endorsed the site since 2008 has a moral obligation to help compensate players if any players are left short of funds after recoveries from the guilty parties. Perhaps the Kelsey Grammer case will tell us whether endorsers also have a legal responsibility.