Can someone please explain the implication of this?

Funds held in trust might show on a balance sheet, but they would be broken out as "restricted cash", and in this case there would be the corresponding liability item of player purses. So yeah, its kind of bad in that it does not appear that player funds were ring-fenced at all, but rather were simply cash along with the companies operating cash.

This is an old financial statement, so we can't infer too much from it, but the substantial current deficit (current assets minus current liabilities) is not encouraging.

Just got around to looking at the link, that balance sheet is from two years ago.

This is correct and I should have been more clear. It should be noted that we are looking at an unaudited proforma balance sheet for whatever that is worth.

In my admittedly limited understanding of Australian liquidation law, unsecured trade debt is the last debt to get paid in a liquidation. 100% of employee wages are paid, then secured creditors, (I'm assuming taxes have some priority too), and finally unsecured creditors. Query whether the creditors are individual poker players or the skins they play on. I don't know.

OFF TOPIC (sorry)
This is a gross over-generalization and is completely misleading w/r/t US bankruptcy law. The only thing that changes is the procedure and the forum (bankruptcy court vs. state court). Adversary proceedings in bankruptcy court are common. Motions for relief from the automatic bankruptcy stay in order to continue to pursue state court actions (at least to judgment) are common. Some debts are non-dischargeable. You shouldn't just give up if a debtor goes into bankruptcy - follow them to bankruptcy court.

Microgaming is a joke.Now they release all this great new software, completely ignoring players whose money is held hostage.Return us the money, issue and announcement, do something FFS!

I got over 15k there and thankfully it won't hurt my mr since it's spread on other sites, so i can wait a bit (wait for what though?when are you going to release some info about our money?) but there are players who had all their money on one of those skins, what the hell is going on there?

All,


None of the much awaited updates from Tusk/MGS have reached us as of yet. As mentioned by some in this thread, liquidation processes move slowly. That said, we would like all our players to know that we are not just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Ever since this whole thing surfaced we have been trying to look into alternatives and possible solutions for players and skins that were affected. We are currently looking at solutions both on and off the Microgaming Network.

It takes no rocket scientist to figure out that our business has gotten badly hurt. Lots of money has gone into marketing and the daily grind of operation. We try not to cry over what can be spilled milk. We want to make it perfectly clear: Our priority is to try and find a solution for all the players affected that everyone can live with.


Sincerely,

Rednines

its not that i dont belive you when u say your best interest is the players money, but how as a player am i post to belive that when you cant even tell me where my money is at the moment nor even explained when u depo on your site your money is in hands of TUSK and nothing to do with the skin?

after finding out how all this works around MG its ran like a bunch of hi school dope dealers, to many in the middle man involved tryin to pinch out a nik or dime

I was not trying to suggest that you could not pursue money owed to you in a bankruptcy case, but that you cannot institute new law suits, which afaik is correct. For instance, if company A declares bankruptcy, and I want to sue them for damages caused by their negligence, I can't until the bankruptcy is resolved. If I have an existing financial relationship with a company that declares bankruptcy, that will be resolved in bankruptcy court. Or, more to the case at hand, under US laws I would be able to pursue my money through the bankruptcy proceedings but I would not be able to sue them for breach of contract. I am certainly not a lawyer, though, and it has been a while since I studied bankruptcy law. I have no idea how much you are allowed to do within the bankruptcy court (for instance, if your agreement was for a company to hold your money in trust, but they violated that and treated it as a loan, then declared bankruptcy at some point, I don't know if you are able to argue that your money should be considered money held in trust.)

Edit - and I also know nothing about gaining exemptions from the automatic stay, or the implications of that. That seems like it would be a logistical nightmare, since a new civil could hold up the bankruptcy proceedings. Or on the flip side, all assets could be dispersed by the bankruptcy court before the civil case was over.

Rednines,

Does that statement apply to all skins? It appears as though Royal Card Club has been fairly silent in this whole thing and I would like some re-assurance that their main priority is getting our money returned to us, as well.

That statement applies to RCC as well.

Couple of updates:
So far i have email about 25 lawyer and believe it or not only one of them is communicating back to me. i will start calling them in the afternoon aust time.

Thanks cashjr i sent the document to the lawyer. Once he found more information about the tusk status and their current liquidator i will ask him about treating the player purse as trade payable or trustee and if we can take any sort of action.

I am not trying to sue anyone or dont think we can speed things up. I just dont want and can not afford to miss an opportunity to do something that could have improved my chance even slightly. For example in Canada when company goes bankrupt they have to register with federal government and there setup a bankruptcy trustee that creditor and individual would sign up with to get inline with creditor. I think they might have to do same with ASIC in Aust and the liquidator have to get register.(not sure on this one and just guessing which is why i need lawyer to find out more info).

Again if anyone else wanna join the legal action together feel free to email me with amount tusk owes you to FundInTusk@hotmail.com

Here is a question about the balance sheet of tusk. i do realize that the data is about 2 years old but that is the best we have to go for. As far as liquidation goes employees, secure creditor and trade creditor and then if any money left goes to shareholder i guess..
in their statement the player purse is 6.5M which is still very small compare to their net asset or totally equity of 22.2M which means that our money should still be there. right?
Another way of looking at it is to look at the intangible asset 24M which makes up for the majority of the asset 33M. If this intangible asset is something like a goodwill (not sure what is the equiv term in US or other Country) then we are in big trouble since this could be an asset that will not be cashed after liquidation. in this case company has 9M asset and 10.8 liability which means it is short by 1.8M which most likely be taking out of the trade creditor. so in this case we should still recover 75% of our money. is this the right way to be looking at these data?

Thanks

Am I the only one who finds the behavior of Tusk and Micrograming extremely odd?

- In the first few days after Tusk skins were pulled from the MG network things like customer support automated reply and standard welcome message from skin on login still worked The plug has now been pulled on even these automated services.

- Tusk must have an address on file somewhere with someone. As one poster pointed out, MG almost certainly has this address. So why don't we know it? If it were posted in this thread we could perhaps send a lawyer (or just some random person with money tied up) down to the Tusk office to find out wtf is going on. At this point I'd feel better just knowing there IS a functioning office.

- Microgaming must know that the longer this goes on without any helpful response, the more inclined 2+2ers will be to take collective action to try to penalize MG. This collective action is just in it's infancy, with people for example in this thread suggesting that 2+2 refuse ads from MGS. I think we need to come up with a more credible threat for MG if they do not become more engaged in the discussion. Is there anything we can do to facilitate the development of some penalty to which MG will pay heed? Threats of boycotts often ring hollow, of course, because to the extent that good players are perceived to be boycotting the site, other good players will have additional incentive to play on that site and so boycotts are often counter-productive.

- Related to the point above, could professional poker players file a class-action against Prima related to their failure to deliver information. For those of us who file as professional gamblers, perhaps Prima's elimination of us from the network without heads-up and without subsequent useful information would entitle us to compensation due to wages lost because of their reckless disregard? (I know, that is a stretch but I'm trying to think of anything we can do to force MG to act more quickly and I encourage others to post ideas here).

Poking around in Global Approach's documents regarding the reversal of the Tusk purchase would probably reveal more interesting things, but I really dont have the time to do all of that. They are here: http://www.globalapproach.com.au/announcements.html

For example, regarding devaluation of Tusk's sub-licenses (yes that is you skins) and an operating loss of $105k (currency unsure, I assume AUD): http://www.globalapproach.com.au/ann...atAccounts.pdf

From Global Approach Full Year Statutory Accounts , pages 8-9:
There is more info out there.

Yes, after Global backed out of the acquisition, they also transfered the ownership of Music Hall Casino, plus the other casino and poker room they controlled to Tusk.

So in affect, Tusk was not only not bought out by Global, but they ended up with Globals casino interests upon the reversal. So you would have to assume there was some agreement to purchase these assets by Tusk, but for how much, or when it would be paid who knows. But it's possible these new assets were losers for Tusk and they didn't want to pay off a huge monetary settlement to Global a year or two later for useless assets.

It's hard to get any info on this company, it's like some secret that only the insiders know for sure. How they got complete control of millions of dollars of poker players and casino players money is a puzzle to me. You'd think micro gaming would segregate funds deposited on their network to protect themselves at the least.

MGS is watching. I hope that makes everyone feel better. Well at least you know where one MGS rep is.

Why are the skins not providing us with information on TUSK?

I know for a fact my casino (battlefield, still only had 30% rakeback) has been in touch with TUSK in the past due to withdrawal issues (who would of thunk?).

Can we get a skin to post information on TUSK?

If skins really are doing things for our benefit I'm sure disclosing basic information on TUSK would not cause any problems. Why are we having to look up all this stuff on our own?

I wonder if Tusk provided any financial information to the skins before the skins paid them the 25k to get into business with them?

http://www.globalapproach.com.au/ann...atAccounts.pdf at p. 47

So why are people still talking as if this will be a liquidation under Australian law? Am I missing something? I'd think the liquidation would happen under the law of whatever country Tusk is registered in.

We haven't been able to figure out what country it's registered in. I did find old whois records for some of Tusk's sites pointing to companies with similar names in Vanuatu however:

Tusk Licensing
2nd Floor, Raffer House. Kumul Highway
Port Vila, VU

Tusk Licensing Limited
2nd floor, Raffea House Kumul Highway
Port Vila, - 1234 VU

Also, we've heard that they operate out of Brisbane, and found that Fuze Media appears to be a related company. They're at:

Fuze Media Pty Ltd
GPO Box 962
Brisbane QLD 4001 Australia
Tel: +617 3815 1900
Fax: +617 3815 1991

Tusk handled all the payment processing. White-label skins, in contrast to licensees, are just marketers.

That balance sheet was for Global, and Tusk is not a part of them any more.

I think the only outside entity that has any useful information on Tusk right now is eCOGRA. They knew enough of whats going on to pull their seal of approval 12 days before the announcement of liquidation.

eCOGRA would have had to pay each person who lost money through Tusk casinos 1k each if it hadn't pulled it's seal before the liquidation.

eCOGRA has information and it's them you should be contacting to better understand what went down at Tusk.

It has come to the point where speculation from any of the skin representatives would be better than all the guess work that it happening with the helpful posters of 2+2. An educated guess by Rednines or Royal Card Club would give some idea as to what the insiders think will happen. Any information at this point will benefit MG and the skins way more than leaving us in the dark imo.

Also, briefly talking to my roommate, he has informed me that Australia is under a common law system. This is the exact same system that Canada, and for that matter Britain is under. Perhaps digging into procedures in these countries would give us a better understanding instead of comparing it to the completely unique situation that the U.S. are in.

If they were going to release any information on why they pulled the seal, they would have done so already. I don't think they can release that information any more than any other auditor could.

E.g. remember the Absolute situation? Gaming Associates gave the audit report to the client, Khanawake, who didn't release it.

eCogra is a voluntary certification organization. I believe Tusk paid for the certification, and, other than revoking it, eCogra probably isn't allowed to say anything else.

Because the US doesn't have a common law tradition? Um, ok.

The point of posting financial information and links to information is to shed some light on the subject, point to interesting/useful facts, and hopefully point players and/or skins in the right direction with the ultimate goal of the skins continuing in operation and freeing up player's money as soon as practicable. The rednines (I think) rep said they were considering all possibilities, including finding another network. I think that should be encouraging to players. I don't think an outright boycott of MGS is very productive at this point. I do think that MGS should give players some assurance that player funds will be guaranteed, but for whatever reason MGS isn't willing to do that at this point.

As for my posting and searching, I think that the more information brought to light, the better. Plus I'm bored at work and can't really fire up a table or two since I have to instarespond to IMs and phones and a myriad of other interruptions.

It's a shame that the only people that possibly know ANYTHING about this are not able to comment on it. It's great to have watchdog organizations like eCOGRA to protect the players like this.

It just seems to me that a watchdog group that backs up their seal with promises to pay players 1k if they lose money in the casino, would at least release some information about why they pull their seals days before a liquidation.

What good is having a watchdog like eCOGRA if they can just silently pull their seals days before disaster hits and players lose millions? Then afterwards they are under no obligation to it's members to provide any tangible information to the players that lost their money.

It's not like eCOGRA has to maintain secrecy to protect Tusk, who we all know now will no longer be solvent or in the gaming industry.

For further information about Microgaming, please contact:
Stuart Hehir at Chameleon PR
+44 (0) 20 7680 5500
stuart@chameleonpr.com

Can the people who have called/ e-mailed this location chime in on what they were told?