Wouldn't legal action at least give us a better chance of getting our money back and wouldn't this be worth waiting a little longer?
I have currently 12.5k tied up at R9 and I am tired of waiting and hoping. If someone can tell me what I should do to increase our chances of getting our money back please tell me!

Thanks this is exactly what I meant. It also allows current players to see what is going on on does not allow MGS to sweep thsi under the rug.

Start infocamp., tell all the other players at poker sites (especially MGS) that this might happen to them as well.... I Still don't understand how MGS's reputation isn't at stake here.....

Ya you don;t set up a business in vanatu unless you have good reason to do so. Almost everyone close to me in real life has told me to assume my money is unrecoverable.

This is why I am changing my focus to MGS, I think they are the one company who can save us here. I feel the skins and tusk are both crooks and can;t be trusted (skins refuse to disclose any information on tusk when they clearly have it, plus it sound slike they knew they were going down ahead of time and made no notice to players)

Guys

i am probably in a better position than BFP, R9, RCC, Arctis etc to give a skin owner side of what has happened.

We have a small player base and probably only have $500 of player money tied up in their accounts due to (fortunately in this case) our bigger players suffering big downswings in the run up to this.

Our skin was not our main business and didn't really make any money in the time we had it up, however, we were building towards a big site launch which was about a month away.

What the other skin owners have said is true. MPP provide very little information as to their backend operations.

It was news to me they belong to TUSK - TUSK actually handled the players money separately (it was my belief it was all in a central pool of all MGS sites as no buffer fee was requested to cover skin to skin transfers) and news that they were going under.

The first I knew of this was not being able to access the poker software on the 28th.

MPP have made very little effort to contact us. The last contact was 1 week ago to say they were still trying to sort problems.

I personally believe MGS will have no option other than to step in to cover player accounts as this will be an almighty dent to their reputation.

I also believe that the loss of BFP and R9 is also the root cause of their collapse as these two rooms would have generated the majority of MPP income - without them (and they were being removed before this kicked off - though we were only informed by them AFTER this all kicked off) they simply could not continue, for this reason I persoanlly feel most / all of the player purse is safe.

This is pure speculation from myself but I feel the series of events is as follows:

MGS warnings to MPP about rakeback violations from R9 and BFP

Fall on deaf ears at MPP as they are obvious on a good thing with their fixed % of the rake from the players at these sites.

MGS play hard ball and issue advanced notice of BFP and R9 being removed from network

MPP fight back with legal proceedings to preserve their possibly only significant source of income (this is the impression that we the skin owners have been given by MPP).

MGS remove licence for all MPP rooms

MPP liquidate.

5Hit hits fan

MPP never gave any indication at any point that they were ever in trouble.

and the biggest online winner of the year for 2008 is TusK investment GG

not only did they rip everyone off but MG is now toyiing everyone along wasting time like u have a chance to get a penny from them i smell riged bs all over wouldnt suprise me if they got house players pulling a potripper hustle.

I mean that I don't need to spin out some storey about this that or the other because players through our skin have a lot of money at stake, quite simply ours don't and if some fiend has made off with the player money we can cover ours ourselves as there is little at stake - this also means that you are getting the honest insight of an owner.

MPP NEVER gave any impression they were in trouble and from what I know of their business model I don't see how they could possibly dip into player funds. I would only think that there would be a problem with player funds if the banking firm used by MPP were in trouble. I may be wrong.

I will post any new information as I get it but as your probably used to reading from the other guys there is no new update.

PS none of the information from MPP pointed towards another business based in Vanutu.

PPS I am convinved my specualtive view of events is close to the downfall of MPP, again I could be a million miles from the truth, but I see no other reason why they would go under, other than the RB on offer at R9 and BFP none of the other sites had anything to offer to drive significant amounts of traffic.

That's a reasonable theory. If true, it seems likely that this was a voluntary liquidation and all the players' money should be there.

On the other hand, eCogra announced that the group's seals had been pulled on Feb. 15, 10 days before the Microgaming letter warning that Battlefield and RedNines would no longer have access to the network as of March 3. Of course it's possible that eCogra pulled their seals because of something to do with the rakeback violation.

Also, there is some question as to how significant Tusk's MPP operations were in relation to their casino operations. The casino operations are presumed to be larger. Certainly the casino sites and the related affiliate site have higher Alexa traffic ranks. I can't remember if that was ever broken out in the financial statements when they were part of Global... feel free to check if you want. Even if the poker operations were minor, however, they could still be the straw that broke the camel's back.

The only thing that I have to add to that is that the whole thing looks to me to be pre-meditated by MGS.

The eCogra seal issue could well be based on financial troubles but eCogra are known to be a puppet of MGS as they pretty much started the group themselves. I wonder if MGS had a word in their ear and asked them to find "something" out of order...

That would make the sequence of events fall something like this:

- MGS warnings to MPP about rakeback violations from R9 and BFP

- Fall on deaf ears at MPP as they are obvious on a good thing with their fixed % of the rake from the players at these sites.

- MGS plans to take down R9 and BFP

- eCogra makes a routine visit to Tusk

- MGS put pressure on eCogra to find "something" wrong

- eCogra revokes the seals.

- MGS play hard ball and issue advanced notice of BFP and R9 being removed from network

- MPP fight back with legal proceedings to preserve their possibly only significant source of income (this is the impression that we the skin owners have been given by MPP).

- MGS remove licence for all MPP rooms

- MPP liquidate.

- 5Hit hits fan

- MGS got rid of its two biggest rakeback rooms and hides behind the seal revocation as the obvious cause for the licence revocations.

- Players are left out in the cold and MGS keeps making money.

From Microgaming's first statement, the order is reversed:

Microgaming annnounced today that it has terminated its software licence with Tusk Investment Corporation, with immediate effect, after having received Tusk's notification of its plans to put the Company into liquidation.

Right you are. Reverse those two:

- MGS warnings to MPP about rakeback violations from R9 and BFP

- Fall on deaf ears at MPP as they are obvious on a good thing with their fixed % of the rake from the players at these sites.

- MGS plans to take down R9 and BFP

- eCogra makes a routine visit to Tusk

- MGS put pressure on eCogra to find "something" wrong

- eCogra revokes the seals.

- MGS play hard ball and issue advanced notice of BFP and R9 being removed from network

- MPP fight back with legal proceedings to preserve their possibly only significant source of income

- MPP liquidate.

- MGS remove licence for all MPP rooms

- 5Hit hits fan

- MGS got rid of its two biggest rakeback rooms and hides behind the seal revocation as the obvious cause for the liquidation that was the reason for the licence revocations.

- Players are left out in the cold and MGS keeps making money.


BTW: Does any one know what the eCogra seals were revoked for specifically?

Some observations:

1. The whole Vanuatu v. Australia jurisdiction issue probably doesn't matter very much. If player funds are in good order then you will probably get most of your money in due course, although employees and other creditors may get a little of it because it probably isn't fenced. On the other hand, if the money is gone then there is almost certainly nothing anyone can do about it.

2. If MGS bails you out, that's merely a gesture to maintain goodwill. It doesn't mean they can or will do it next time and it doesn't make your deposits in other Microgaming rooms any safer.

3. If MGS doesn't bail you out, that doesn't make your deposits in other Microgaming rooms any less safe. Microgaming doesn't have anything to do with whether your money is safe. This incident may have changed your perception of reality, but actual reality is unaltered. You are trusting the room where you deposited the money and that's either justified or it isn't.

4. Other Microgaming sites are victims here too. They trusted MGS to manage the network for them and MGS has let them down twice. First they allowed BFP and R9s to break network rules and engage in unfair competition against the other skins. Then they failed to supervise the Tusk situation and allowed a scandal which hurts the reputations of all their innocent site-customers.

Think about whatever you do for a living. How would you feel if a cut-rate competitor played fast-and-loose with the rules and stole your business? Then how would you feel when they went bankrupt and everyone said it was *your* fault!?

5. Just because the white-label skin owners say that Tusk is the one legally responsible for paying you doesn't make it true. Maybe you should spend less time analyzing Vanuatu liquidation law and more time considering whether you have legal recourse against BFP, R9s, and the rest of them. Especially considering how some of these rooms have apparently presented themselves to the community. If these skins have any assets then maybe you are entitled to them.

Agree 100% with this point. The skin owners have a lot of explaining and while I think some are innocent and victims of TUSK I feel fairly confident that others are much more in the blame. Problem is, how much money is there available and how do you go abotu going after them?

Which one of these steps is the one where MGS management completely loses their minds and makes a ridiculous plan that is certain to antagonize their major operator-customers, shrink their player base and rake revenue, infuriate many players, and create a storm of terrible publicity?

I'm not saying your scenario is wrong because I can't prove that. Just appreciate the level of folly you are attributing to MGS. Such a plan couldn't possibly end well and anyone in their position should have been able to recognize that.

I honestly believe that MSG had no idea what was going to happen when they allegedly cutoff the rakeback skins. Like turning over a rock and getting a surprise. Not that I'm excusing MGS's negligence here. They never should have allowed Tusk to operate without proper controls and supervision.

If MGS had no idea that cutting off a large number of players would cause a great upset, then I don't know why it is so ridiculous that MGS could have acted in the way that I theorized above.

I think I agree with this. It's kind of like, for example, when a government decides to topple a dictator without a strong enough look at what might happen to that country afterwards and a plan for solving the resulting problems.

I have to disagree a bit with the statement in your previous post about our funds not being any safer in the future if MGS does decide to bail this situation out. I think that this has to cause MGS to review their requirements of licensees. Hopefully in the wake of this they will implement a requirement that all player funds be ring-fenced, and perhaps institute a mechanism whereby in future situations like this MGS is able to immediately take control of these ring-fenced funds and act as a trustee on behalf of the players to return their money quickly.

It certainly makes me wonder what MGS expected was going to go down on march 3rd.

My guess is BFP and RED9s were really defying MGS for over a period of at least a year and MGS had enough of it. The fact that the skins refuse to comment on this leads me to beleive there is much more going on here then we know. Rakeback could have been a technical way to kick them out but for all wee know even more serious violations could have occured.

It is also a possibility that MGS had no idea Tusk was insolvent and upon discovering so, surely it is best they pull the plug ASAP rather than let Tusk dip in to player purse further to continue operations?

Somebody please cliffnote this for me. I haven't the time to read this all. I suspect others may feel the same.

Yes that is their officially press release.

But it does not address the fact that they were already planning to drop 2 of tusks biggest casinos because of rakeback violations.

BTW I think a previous poster indicated that tusk is in liquidation but is not insolvent (if I understand what you are saying).

Yes, it is very much the hope that Tusk went in to voluntary liquidation *before* becoming insolvent, since the loss of their two biggest skins would make them insolvent in the future.

We do not know if this is the case or not, although for everyones sake I hope it is.

If people know who owned tusk or was in charge of all operations, why not find those people, and take legal action against them personally.

And if they are in Vanuatu, invade them their army only consists of 300 volunteers and take them prisoners, as they have comitted acts of fraud against you. When you will start ripping their nails out one by one and burning their boddies slowly I am sure they will come up with your money. Also I am sure Vanuatu has no such laws preventing torture, they probably never signed any treaties or geneva convention, of course I haven't looked any of it up.

- Licences revoked

- Everyone's pissed

- Waiting for liquidators.

Everything else is conjecture.

Everybody keeps talking about BFP and R9's, but do all the other skins clump into the same category as them? Are BFP and R9's in "more trouble" than RCC, Artic etc.?

Of course they knew that. But that's the least part of what happened.

Skins have been kicked off networks many times for various reasons and it has not usually ended like this.

I think MGS expected that:

1. The notification letter would precipitate some settlement that would prevent an actual kickout or

2. BFP and R9s would close down and return player funds or

3. BFP and R9s (possibly all of MPP) would relocate to another network or

4. BFP and R9s would sell the player accounts to another poker room.

All of these things have happened in the past with various networks and normally the players may be unhappy but they don't lose their money.

I find it unlikely that MGS was totally unwilling to consider a negotiated settlement over rakeback violations. I do not understand why Tusk would not either continue operating with 26 customers or else broker a deal in which another Microgaming room takes the players and accepts the 26 skins as affiliates. I don't understand why Tusk didn't try to find a poker room on another network that would buy the 28-skin customer base and take over the account balances.

In fact I can't think of any good reason why it went down this way unless something is terribly wrong. Someone would have paid something for access to the customer lists, player funds, and the opportunity to try and persuade those players not to withdraw. At the very least they could just cashout all the players and liquidate themselves. Lots of small solvent companies with minimal physical assets just stop operating without any expensive legal process. Yet Tusk went straight to a liquidator who is going to take a stiff fee and give the rest away. And maybe the Tusk ownership and management even has legal troubles. Only a major player account deficit explains what is happening without wishful thinking. I'm really sorry but I just don't see this ending well.