Nice bit of detective work SI, looks suspiciously like this might indeed have a tie-in to the PMI who is the problem. Maybe the 'parent' company of the PMI we know and love?

well, i'd say that usually small financial institutions like this just operate across the US with kind of divisions, however, they should be on each state that they conduct business in's SOS buisness entity registry.. or at least the Financial Regulatory register for each state..

I have checked...

but the likelyness is that they use trades as names which have no relevance to the actual registered buiness name, which would make them hard to track...

Ok, SI's sleuthing got me interested and I did some googling, seems there's a company out there that has been scamming/unauthorized charging people for a while with the name PMIdentity which somehow seems to be linked to Intellius and seems to be a credit checking/report company, seems a bit coincidental. Could it be that FullTilt used this 'credit checking'/information company on it's customers to verify information in some way and that's how they (PMI) got the relevant banking information (pure speculation on my part)? Or maybe there's no link at all and just a coincidence. A simple webcrawler search turns up a lot of complaints from consumers re: unauthorized CC charges by this company.
For what it's worth, this may or may not have any connection to OUR beloved PMI, as the problem with PMIdentity seems to be related to unauthorized or scummy use of recurring 'membership' charges but they DO seem to have other companies associated with them under other names per some of the scam report pages and they ARE involved in the financial information business and have the PMI attached to their name so I thought I'd post it here just in case.

success? I deposited $100 in feb and got hit 4 times since then, 1x PMI, and 3x ftilt, which means $300 stolen

Dear xxx,

This email is to inform you that funds deposited to your Full Tilt Poker account using Quick Deposit were not collected due to the funds being disputed.

For your reference the transaction details are as follows:

• On 2011-02-07 21:18:58 you made a Deposit for $100.00 (USD) using Quick Deposit (Transfer Ref: 0784C0FE).

• On 2011-02-08 00:00:00 we received a notification from your bank, informing us that the above transaction had been disputed.

Until the funds are recovered your Full Tilt Poker account has been temporarily restricted. You may log into Full Tilt Poker but you will be unable to play poker, transfer funds or initiate any withdrawals.

In order to remove these restrictions, please reply to this email stating that you wish to make a deposit and our Customer Support staff will assist you. Once the funds have been recovered your account will be restored.

If you have any questions on this, please contact us at cashier@fulltiltpoker.com.

Full Tilt Poker Support

I may be a bit dense but what is the connection to the e-mail? Did you indeed dispute the feb. deposit? I see nothing about 4 different charges, you really need to be a bit clearer in your post.

Can you provide a source? This could be very interesting

http://pmidentity.pissedconsumer.com...224113848.html

Just one of MANY links to be found to various consumer complaint sites on this PMIdentity company. Simple websearches turn up a LOT of them.

Ok, did ANOTHER websearch on PMI and financial services... VEEERY interesting link came up:

http://www.pmiconsult.com/

Seems to be an electronic banking services consultancy. Two quotes from their website:

A leader in the core banking, treasury & capital markets and payments solutions sector. We are dedicated to guiding our clients through global software upgrades and implementations.

PMi has been delivering services to the payments / cash management sector for many years including project management, business analysis, and software implementation. Most recently this has included succesful project delivery focused on SEPA, SWIFTNet, PSD & Target2...


Once again I have NO idea if this is or isn't linked to the PMI we're talking about itt but once again, a coincidental appearance of the PMI moniker to a financial services (in fact it seems from their website e-banking) company.

Underlines added by me for emphasis.

^^nah they seem legit, they are UK company and listed on companies house... (UK business registry database)

This one is international. We are certainly looking for an American company. Obviously this company could be using a shell in the US but its unlikely an international would be using a US shell. It usually works the other way around (to get around taxes, business regulations ect)

These complaints seem to be connected to free credit score which is certainly annoying but not a scam. There is usually a disclaimer (that people ignore or do not see) that states they are going to continue to charge you until you cancel. However, none of us have EVER authorized PMI and PMI reps also clearly state that the charge is in error. Charges with Free score are legit... sort of

PROBABLY both right BUT, need I point out that FullTilt is a UK/international based company as well? Not saying that there IS a connection just something I ran across and found coincidental that they are in the electronic banking industry AND have the PMI in their company name. As far as an international using a US shell, they would most likely HAVE to use a US shell to process US bank transactions (not saying that anything of the kind happened of course). Is it terribly far-fetched to think that this company may have done sub-contracting for FT regarding payment processing and got banking information that way? I don't know, just posting for info purposes.

My thought as well... as I said, just posted it due to the coincidence of the PMI name and link to an identity/credit/financials scam/scum practice.

There is a thread on P5's that was started January 31st...

Quoting a post from 1-31-11: "Just got a hold of someone from PMI, they are a former payment processor for Full Tilt. Apparently there was an error in their system that caused all these unauthorized charges. Representative said the transactions will be reversed within 3 business days."

So, obv the error-in-system is BS as they have been feeding the public this line for months.

It also looks like people have been contacting FTP about this for over 2 months now. Their lack of a response if quite disconcerting.

I'm pretty certain that this PMI company will definitely not have a registered name of PMI anywhere, cos well, they wouldn't be so dumb would they.. The only reason i thought the fiirst entity was kinda suspicious is that all of its business interests are based in the gaming sectors..

As an aside, I tried calling PMI twice this morning and the phone just kept ringing. I was expecting to not get through, however they usually have a voicemail box set up. Has anyone else noticed that PMI no longer has the vmail set up? I wonder if they are disconnecting from the number and moving on

True but only if this is the MAIN processor for FT and their is no evidence of that so far. FT would probably have multiple companies, thus would not need a company to set a shell in the US. We are just speculating and you could easily be right. But unfortunately there is nothing except the name that links the two...

Never underestimate the stupidity of people... especially the crooked ones.

In case anyone missed it: http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-875-8035


Not a poker message board, but it's on Page 2 where people start figuring out FTP is somehow connected.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be the MAIN processor for FT or in fact the parent company may not be a 'processor' per se at all but rather as the site says a consultancy that works on the software used to process payments electronically. Perhaps FT used them in setting up their payment processing systems... yes all speculation but I found it interesting and thought it worth posting if anyone wanted to check further.

If FT would get on the ball and release some hard information regarding all this, our amateur sleuthing and speculation would be unnecessary.

Also, if you do a little googling, you can find many similar threads. In many early posts, when people called PMI and demanded an explanation, they were told that PMI was a former payment processor for FTP. This begs the question:

Why did FTP originally decide to sever ties with PMI?

If it turns out FTP knew what PMI, but neglected to tell their players...Well, somebody has a lot of explaining to do.

Well said No Fizzle, and regardless of the answer re: FullTilt's knowledge (What did he know and when did he know it? Sound familiar to Americans? ) the underlined is VERY true.

FT is clearly operating negligently. They should have chosen their partners better and they should have alerted their customers about what COULD be going on. And when we in the poker community brought it to their attention they should have done better than ignore it.

Unlike most of you, I think the disappearance of Sean and Doug is a good thing. I think that means Tilt is finally taking this seriously and is looking into the matter. They do not want Sean or Doug to exacerbate the situation with providing information they are not authorized or lieing themselves into a trap. I just hope they come back with some answers...

http://http://www.nationalpaymentprocessing.com/

This is the company associated with PMI, who worked under them.

Looking through the website, apparently anyone can sign up as an "agent" with them and begin third-party processing. Scary.

I didnt dispute feb 07 $100 deposit ... I did indeed made this deposit however my bank acct was on 2/9 (this is ok) but then again on 2/23 by pmi for 100 on 3/29 by ftpayments for 100 and 3/31 by pmi for 100. The point of the email is that they got disputed from my bank and now they want me to pay them again? not gonna happen... No more online poker for me