What a hilariously ridiculous article. But, people on here love any chance to A) be pessimistic and B) rant about the government/USA, so few people are going to read it for what it is.

PokerStars is avoiding the question of "will US players get their full FTP balances repaid?"

First email sent is at the bottom.

I don't think Forbes is one of these sites. Vardi wouldn't even publish speculation about the Pokerstars purchase because he wasn't confident it would happen and didn't want to get hopes up.

I contacted the DOJ this morning and the lady said details would be posted shortly, but couldn't give an exact timeframe, she wasn't sure if shortly meant tomorrow or the next day. Interesting that she told you next week.

Lastly, I don't think being patient is the best option here. Once they announce the remissions process, if it is not what we want, it will be much harder to change. The time to speak up and make sure it is fair is now, even though I believe in the end the DOJ will be fair, it doesn't hurt to speak up.

I think the difference in why the gov gave stars and ftp an opportunity to pay back US players is because they didn't already have the fawking money in their own pockets like they do now.

Now they don't give a fawk if we get paid.

It's also clear that Stars/FTP really don't give a **** if we get paid or not... otherwise they would have made it in the deal that the DOJ must pay the players the funds.

I just got off the phone with "Jen" as well...She said that, "there will be a press release in the near future," and that she "had no more details at this time."

I asked her specifically about player transfers and even asked for her gut feeling on the situation, lol. Obviously she declined to divulge anything more. I can't imagine how sick I am going to be when I get the $800 in deposits I made instead of the 28k i'm owed. So so sickening.

i mean, it sounds disconcerting but you can't really read much into this. pokerstars can't speak for the DoJ when there is no stated plan for recourse yet

I agree and am mostly optimistic.

However it seems hypocritical for me to hear Stars and FTP saying, "Reimbursing players is our #1 priority", and now that the deal is 100% done, no one is telling us we will be reimbursed for 100% of our balances. They are just telling us to talk to the DoJ without any kind of assurance.

As the Forbes article points out, the reason why it appears that certain things are up in the air is because the office responsible for bringing the prosecutions/settling the case is not the same office that will be responsible for actually handling the remission process (and the folks in the remissions dept couldn't get too heavily involved in the case until the settlement was reached).

Also, I don't know a ton about the remissions process, but I would imagine that this case is somewhat unique in terms of both the number of potential claimants and the scope of claims to be processed. I'd imagine it's a little tricky to devise a system that is simple enough that a guy with $100 online will use it, yet robust enough to handle someone who had a million tied up.

Now, based on everything I've read, the folks at the SDNY have placed a pretty high premium on ensuring that players get paid back. And while they are not actually processing the payments, they can make recommendations to the remissions branch wrt making the process as quick and smooth as possible, but it's not surprising that there are still some kinks left to be ironed out (just like I'm sure Stars is still figuring a bunch of things out, btw).

Still, at the end of the day, (1) the DOJ wants players to get paid back and (2) Stars shipped them more than enough money to cover the balances, so I'm pretty optimistic.

Cmon, dude. Either you'll get the full balance, nothing, or some arbitrary % of your full balance. I don't see ANY scenario where people get back their literal "deposits".

Also the fact that they aren't sure what they are doing yet... just goes to show that it wasn't written in stone that we should be getting our money back.... wtf you mean you don't know what you are going to do with it??????

There are a million reasons to be optimistic that we won't get shafted, but the Forbes article is from such a reliable reporter that I have to believe they are at least considering shafting us, which I never believed before.

All we can do is make our voices heard right now about how unjust anything less than full repayment from the Department of Justice would be. I strongly believe they will do the right thing even without nudging, but the nudging certainly won't hurt.

It sounds to me that the author of that Forbes article somehow decided to use the word "deposits" in the sense of money on deposit with a bank.

In other words, the BALANCE!

All the anguish about deposit vs balance is most likely a waste of time and sweat.

I thought that looked funny when I read it yesterday. hmmmmm

They might as well have said

"Under the terms of the agreement, PokerStars will pay a substantial amount of money to the United States, and the government has agreed that all U.S. players will have an opportunity to request that they be compensated out of those funds for their losses. They may also request for blow jobs and hookers. They may also request for cocaine."

Positive rebuttals of Forbes article:

"Rich Muny ‏@RichMuny
Forbes article on DoJ repaying FTP players deposits vs balances...unfounded speculation IMO. All signs positive so far…

2h Rich Muny ‏@RichMuny
@jordanPmorgan It sounds like worst-case speculation w/o identified sources to back.

2h Rich Muny ‏@RichMuny
@pianospike I read the FTP Forbes article. It sounds like worst-case speculation w/o identified sources to back.

Skallagrim response:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...92&postcount=4

So they stated they had set aside ~150 million for remission? Isn't that a huge positive sign that people will get paid on balances since that's how much FTP owed on US player balances.

It sounds like you didn't read the article, the author knew exactly what he was talking about and his source for the concern is Jeff Ifrah who worked on the deal on behalf of FTP.

The reason the DOJ was concerned about allowing PokerStars to repay US players (reports are this was a big sticking point in the negotiation) is that while they could allow PS to repay it's own players, they couldn't order PS to repay FTP players therefore transferring US winning player debt.

The reason they couldn't do that is that in order to transfer a debt, the debt needs to be lawful, for the DOJ to declare US player winnings lawful would be essentially saying that they weren't gambling winnings, because all gambling winnings are unlawful.

If the winnings aren't from gambling, they would have been blowing a huge hole in their criminal case and all future cases against poker sites, because if the players aren't gambling, the site must by law not be a gambling site.

So they crafted a brilliant solution by which US players can be paid their full balances through remission, without the DOJ legitimizing the operation of unlicensed poker sites by 'laundering' the forfeiture as remission to victims.

While they can't guarantee AFMLS will agree with their recommendation, they've done the best that they can do for US players

Does not compute.

Funniest post of the year IMO.

DOJ: US Players' FTP balances total ~$150million


DOJ: We are setting aside $150 million for US players to file claims for remission


DOJ: GOD No! US players aren't getting their FTP balances back. MUAHAHAH


...........

Stop making sense. I want to freak out.

and this

I'll try an analogy, SDNY has bent over backwards in this case to avoid persecuting the players, had they wanted, they could have charged every withdrawal as being a Travel Act violation and not allowed any player repayment.

But like a cop at a drug deal, they looked the other way and allowed the companies to repay the players as they were only after the 'dealers'.

Unfortunately while they were looking the other way, two of the 'dealers' didn't repay their customers, but the DOJ can't look the other way in a binding legal settlement before the judge and order PS to repay US players.

So the DOJ charged the 'dealer' with fraud against it's customers, so now they can recommend that the money forfeited be used to repay the players, without jeopardizing their ability to continue prosecuting 'dealers' by establishing that poker player winnings are not gambling proceeds - which would be like saying marijuana purchases are not really drug deals.

is this true?

It is true but not the entire picture. Your residence as of June 29, 2011, determines whether you will be paid back by Pokerstars or the DOJ. So if you moved out of the U.S. in July 2011, you would still need to apply to the DOJ for remission.