Well i will rephrase then. I played at fulltilt cause I was receiving 27% rake back. I just think stars has alot better tour. and an easier format o play and navigate on. feel like i'm playing in a cartoon on ft. I have heard story after story on here abput frozen accounts due to bots and overzealous (mis-spell prob) behaviour of Full tilt poker security. I would'nt mind playing bots at all cause I really doubt they are programmed to handle fold equity situations. If you cant beat a bot shorthanded then you must be a poor player due to the fact the bots cant handle being bluffed that well. In the united states from experience of dealing with well run businessess, if you are a good paying customer and there was any problem with your account you would usually receive a phone call and feel valued and thanked for being a customer. Full ilt poker seems to come off (and maybe its me) , like there doing everyone a favor. It will eventually catch up to full tilt if us market becomes regulated cause more customer orientated sites will come on the seen and take market share. I know stars is not as fishy as party, but if you practice good game selection you can find good games at all levels. Just takes some patience and investigating. I contacted them recently regarding an issue of not being able to log on after an update. Even though I had to email instead phone like party, they were back 2 me within a few hours and suggested i restart computer which worked. I contacted full tilt once by email regarding deposit problems and they responded the next day. I know my grammer is poor cause im very tired right now, but in a successfull business family where you take care of your customers and resolve customer complaints very rapidly, and pay close attention to all departments looking out for loose cannon managers such as a security department mgr wanting to look good to the higher ups. Sorry about the lenght, I have been playin online quite often since 1999 at paradise poker.

Of course there is some possibility.

However, given that I am not convinced in the infallibility of FTP, it seems rough to let them steal $47k without justifying themselves.

Yes.

Because this poor bloke has had $47k stolen from him, and he has no way of defending himself.

If Stars can wrongly accuse TeddyFBI's mother, then there is no doubt in my mind that FTP can make a mistake here.

This assumes that FTP never makes mistakes.

I think it would be fair to say that this is unlikely.

I agree.

What possible reason could there be?

Read more IG forum please.

But the issue at hand is the delay - that's what people are passing judgement on.

I think that even people accused of serious crimes should be told what they are accused of; even people accused of serious crimes deserve a presumption of innocence; even people accused of serious crimes should be allowed to respond to the accusations against them.

OP's money isn't stolen or even confiscated. It's just frozen while FTP investigates whatever it is they suspect her of doing.

Eventually they may accuse her of something and decide to close her account and/or confiscate funds. At that point I would hope she gets an opportunity to defend herself. But we aren't there yet. You are just unnecessarily inflaming matters by using words like "stolen" when they clearly don't apply yet.

Let's keep the discussion focused on the things FTP is actually doing wrong in this case:

1. Being rude to a good customer.

2. Not giving the customer an honest timeline for when they hope to resolve this situation.

3. Making promises to respond within a specific timeframe and not keeping those promises.

We've been around these issues before with FTP and they keep promising to reform their system and do better. Apparently they need to try again. Good customer service and a thorough investigation need not be mutually exclusive.

"Seizing someone's money, with no reasoning or justification, and refusing to say when it will be returned" is pretty close to a decent working definition of "stealing."

Let's call a spade a spade. No other business in the world would be allowed to behave like this.

I agree well said. Patience has looooonnnnnnnnnggggggggg past. I don't think I could react in such a way as sillysal is handling this matter. I was just curious at what point do we call this type of handling the matter stealing if it's premature. 1,2,3 months. Wow it has already been 3 weeks and counting. Is poker rigged. Hmmmmmmmmm. Why not disclose what the problem is. I know F.T.P. doesn't want to reveal how screwed up their system is. I think they owe it to their customers. Is it too early to say [censored] F.T.P. and move on or should I continue to reserve judgement 1,2,3 months from now. I wonder what the majority of poker players think of F.T.P. not only on this matter but everything as a whole.

hi friends i'm back!!!

well I think the "reasoning" is fraud activities, and the "justification" is information that they gathered after watching 92 (or was it 94) hours of sillysal's table play. So I too think stealing is a harsh word.

paypal did this to me 3 times!

Source?

From OP's statement

"received a letter stating that my account was suspended following a 96 hour investigation of my “table play"

Without saying OP is innocent or guilty, I think this situation is a little different from others.. The other situations people usually talk about are when FTP just freezes people's accounts with no explanation.

I guess what im saying is....FTP saying that it is suspending the account after "96 hours of investigating OP's table play" is their "reasoning"

1. You are an insurance company. Your policyholder is demanding payment for a warehouse that burned down. It sure looks like arson and the owner is the prime suspect, but it's messy and you can't be sure. Do you:

A. Pay the policyholder "his money" for the loss of his warehouse.

B. Refuse to pay while your arson expert does a careful investigation.

2. You are a bank. A customer deposits a very large check drawn on another account at your bank. Now the customer wants to withdraw the money. Your signature expert says the check looks like a forgery but maybe it isn't. Do you:

A. Allow your customer to withdraw "his money".

B. Refuse to allow the withdrawal until you can contact the person who supposedly wrote the check, even though he is on vacation overseas and cannot be reached for several weeks.

3. You are a homeowner. You hire a contractor to do major work on your house. The work is done and he is demanding final payment. Unfortunately you strongly suspect that instead of hiring an electrician, he had his untrained and unlicensed son rewire your kitchen. Do you:

A. Pay the contractor "his money".

B. Refuse to pay until you hire an inspector to review the electrical work.

4. You are an online poker room. A customer wants to cash out. You are currently investigating apparent credit card fraud involving many tens of thousands of dollars in losses and dozens of player accounts doing multilevel chip dumps. It appears that much of the tainted funds were dumped to the player in a very suspicious headsup cash game. Do you:

A. Pay the player "his money"?

B. Freeze the account while conduct a painstaking investigation of all the money flows to sort out the guilty from the innocent bystanders. An important part of the effort is allowing plenty of time for the real card holders to discover and dispute all the fraudulent charges.

You say no other business in the world would behave like this!? Quite the contrary, almost no one makes a habit of promptly paying large sums of money to someone who seems to be cheating them.

Do I blame FTP for bad service and lack of communication? Absolutely. It's terrible and they do it over-and-over.

Do I blame FTP for freezing accounts while they investigate allegations of major wrongdoing? Of course not! Quite the contrary I expect them to diligently investigate fraud and cheating. I want honest games to play in. Furthermore if FTP allows themselves to be stolen blind then soon they will be bankrupt and then no one gets their money back.

The difference between FTP and the examples you quoted is that in the examples, a business needs to provide a reason.

If you're concerned about shoddy construction in the bathroom, you tell the contractor that you're concerned about shoddy construction in the bathroom. You can't unilaterally decide that you're not paying the contractor 'cause something is not right, without telling him what is wrong.

I agree.

I agree - you are spot on. I am a big fan of sites taking a harsh line against people who break the rules, and of doing what they can to stop fraud.

I don't think that this is incompatible with telling a client why you have seized $47k and what you're investigating.

FYP to reflect how FTP would handle things if they ran any of the above businesses.

any updates?

Customs. Not really a business but try crossing the US/Canada border with $50k in cash.

Bank of Nova Scotia / BMO / TD Canada Trust / Royal Bank (so 4 out of 5 of the Canadian big banks) have frozen accounts of mine for anywhere from 2-3 days to 2 weeks.

I agree it is awful and shouldn't happen but real business do exactly the same thing.

You've gotta be kidding me if you reckon they're not going to explain what they're doing while they're doing it.

Certainly, everything the Australian Customs Service does is subject to review by a court, and they're typically pretty good at explaining what they're doing (although AQIS does much more of the seizing of stuff where this is more relevant)

And I am certain they explained how and why they were doing it while they freezed your accounts.
No. "Real" businesses let you know why they're doing it, and keep you informed of the progress.

There is obviously nothing wrong with a seizure per se; it's the lack of communication that accompanies this that is the offensive part.

While I agree in theory I just don't know what could be communicated. Until the investigation is 100% done they can't make any commitments since things might change. They also can't reveal what the investigation involves since then that information could be used by people in the future to circumvent security. They would be pretty much limited to just courtesy e-mails stating we haven't forgotten about you and we are still working on it.

Given that we live in societies which are willing to have public trials for murderers and rapists (despite the fact that knowledge could be theoretically used by future murderers and rapists to commit their crimes) I don't think it is unreasonable to have the same standard for alleged card cheats.

Well, that would be an improvement too.

Although, I don't think that's right.

For example, they could say: "We have detected that you played a series of unusual hands with player ABC. Can you please explain your thinking during these hands?"

or

"You have had a lot of transfers from player DEF. What is your relationship with that player?"

or

"We noticed that you play very long sessions. Can you please tell us about this?"

or

etc.

OP, I was sorry to read about your situation. Legal action would almost certainly not help you - you can certainly do nothing until their investigation is complete (whenever that might be) unless it takes a wholly unreasonable amount of time, by which I mean weeks or more. I think you are entitled to ask them to commit to a timetable and I think they should now say how long it's going to be and stick to it, given their first estimate has busted out.

I also think you should press FT for interest if and when your money is released, FT would be acting unreasonably if they did not at least put your funds on minimum deposit whilst they investigate.

Even if there is unreasonable delay or your money is eventually confiscated I'm sorry to say you would almost certainly be wasting your time bringing a lawsuit. The amount involved is probably not enough to warrant bringing what would be expensive and difficult Court proceedings even if your opponent were a US citizen - previous legal poster unfortunately didn't address the problems you would have in enforcing any judgment against FT who are of course not based on US soil, even supposing you could show it was all a big mistake. Don't take my word for it, try and engage an attorney on a contingency basis for this job and you will soon find out. They will want you to pay a fat hourly rate which will soon eat up any benefit you might get out of a lawsuit.

You're obviously an experienced and ruthless player whether or not guilty as charged. It sucks that you have nobody to appeal to other than the useless shills that are the KGC, but hey, you knew that when you signed up.

Next time maybe manage your exposure a little more tightly? Being accused (rightly or wrongly) of cheating and having your funds delayed or confiscated is a business risk for you just like being robbed at gunpoint is a serious business risk for live cash players.

Even better, move to Britain FFS, zero income tax and a choice of sites with robust oversight.

Josem, you're wrong. Banks freeze money on court order all the time where fraud is alleged. They can be committing an offence if they even discuss details of a freezing order with the customer. And lol at getting any information out of Customs if they decide to stop you and inspect your body cavities.

"Even better, move to Britain FFS, zero income tax and a choice of sites with robust oversight."


American citizens leavin in England or elsewhere still owe income-tax. Supposedly gamblers don't even get a tax-exception for their first $80k of income earned aborad although it has been argued that gambling professionally somehow makes a difference.

Don't want to turn this into a tax thread of course...just pointing out that "move to England, pay no taxes" is not necessarily accurate for an American citizen.

I agree its not as simple as clicking your heels, but doable. But yeah, off topic.

The letter they sent me did not say they gathered information after watching my play for 96 hours. They said that they were suspending my account and that it would be resolved in 96 hours. The reason for the investigation was cited as "table play."

FTP has been in touch with me and I expect this matter to be resolved soon.

It needs to be earned income. Gambling winnings are not "earned." I believe (it is just that, a belief) a professional can convert it earned income.

You'd be surprised what an official legal letter from a lawyer can do.