Europe and I am used to play BJ every day a couple of hands.


After they stopped working with Mbookers I had every single withdraw via Neteller. I did not have the time to make a Ukash or Instadebit not sure which method (if any) is faster but If I would have had a Instadebit I would cash out with that just because its Gui preferance and therefor cant be wrong :P

Received $250 cashout via Instadebit from AP (requested Aug. 19)

US players cant withdraw right?

Correct. they should cut the max cash out to 125 and let everyone withdrawl :-)

so americans being probably approx 85% of Cereus market, and outsiders being 15%. They are unable to pay 15% of their customers properly... :/

I was told 65% (could be lower now because of expats) which is a very bad ratio compared to the 25% of stars and 35%(?) of FTP.

It is a little depressing to see how both, US and NON-US players have completely lost perspective on this issue.

The US government screwed everybody, taking away US citizens´ right to play online poker and bringing the whole industry down, affecting the rest of the players around the world…probably to finance their genocide war with the money seized.

All of you have taken a very comfortable position, the same you take in front of other social, economical and political issues: you only care about getting your paycheck…the rest of the world can fall apart, all you care about is yourself, right?

I am sure you have written tons of e-mails to the sites affected, with all kinds of offensive language, in the same way as you have posted all kinds of nonsense on forums like this…stupid theories and rumors. It is easy to kick someone when is already laying on the floor, isn´t it?

On the other hand, very little has been done to let the US government know how much you dislike the way they mess around with you. Have you done anything with regards to this? Have you told the US government to f#$%& off? Have you done anything to get your rights back? No you haven´t, right?

You are just slaves and are stupid enough not to even recognize who the real villains are.

“The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!”

This is a very ignorant post. Perhaps you should look at the United States Department of Justice facebook wall. And you use the Universal "you" as if every single American is the exact same person with exact same traits and ideals. Your unedecated generalizations are the same type of generalizations that debase equality. Instead of making these broad assumptions that result in accusations we should help each other out.

While you can blame the DOJ, and their position is obviously BS, the fact is that Cereus was extremely underfunded and cannot account for large amounts of player funds. This just exposed yet another scam Cereus was pulling on internet poker players. The lack of liquidity was going to be exposed one day, this just rushed the collapse of their ponzi scheme.

So it was revealed how much money the DOJ froze from Cereus and it didn't add up to what they owed players? News to me, please link to the article with those numbers.

Yeah that was exactly my thought when I saw his post. Until we know that number the "ponzi scheme" term seems a little strong. There's no doubt that a company that generated 9 figures of revenue last few years should (if well managed) be able to take a big punch like BF and bounce back but with a big US player base it's quite possible UB carelessly had a lot of money in US banks and is now left with a fraction of its player pool with little funds to run the show and get them to gamble up their 24m or whatever was reported for non-US balances. I'm sure UB is watching the FTP situation closely in regards to the DOJ's position.

I haven't seen any GTD's get going since Sept 8 - wtf? Is this the final nail in the coffin?

Anyone else get into a GTD lately?

Yeah, except revenue doesn't matter when the company was losing money year over year over year. They didn't pay their debt holders for years, they didn't pay their share holders for years. Yet they found away to pay themselves, lots. They are thieves. So I guess the DOJ just took all the money instead of the guys who have beens stealing for years, that makes sense.

This has been covered over and over and their are links and discussion all over this very website.

AP/UB was $48 million or so short:

http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/06/...as-only-5m-6m/

As I understand it, only $11 million has been identified as Cereus money that was seized. They could have had some of the unidentified money lost.

Ignoring all of that, AP/UB had already stiffed the previous owners of UB. They also defaulted on payments to their long term debt holders at Madiera Fjord. Both of these were well before Black Friday.

Read from there on here:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/busines...cle1166818.ece

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/blanca...ayments-15466/

These above payments were never made to Blast Off but I cannot find a link that discusses it. That is why ultimatebet.com was rebranded to ub.com when Blanca took over. They lost the domain name for a while to the people they stiffed.

So Cereus stiffed the people that sold them Ultimate Bet for what seems like around $100,000,000 (assuming 100 million sale price, depending on how much they paid, was paid off or if payments were only interest) and the investors that held $250 million in notes that were owed $30 million/yr (12%). So they defaulted on around $350 million, on top of two cheating scandals, constant lies/coverups, retro T&C changes and you think they held player's money separate?

Also note that before Black Friday they were 1-2 months behind on affiliate payments. There is nothing that points to this being a financially sound company.

I hope all of you get paid. I would rather see it go to players than Cereus or the govt. Just be realistic about your chances.

Sure, there is a little speculation here like if they had more than $11 million seized, how much they paid for UB, how much of the balance was paid off, but much of this is certain and looks like a ponzi scheme that was exposed. It may have gone on forever had the feds not busted it up but who knows if it would have grown in the meantime.

In any "real" regulated industry, when you default on interest payments on $350,000,000 worth of loans/preferred stock you get sued and go into bankruptcy. This ponzi scheme (or whatever you prefer calling it) should have gone into liquidation 1-2 years ago. A properly licensed or publicly traded company could not have operated this way after two major defaults.

Where are you getting the $11 million in seized money number? I haven't seen that before and its not mentioned in the the S.P. article you linked before it?

The person I discussed this with apparently took the bank accounts listed in the indictment and cross referenced them with the forfeiture.gov notice.

I thought I read that the list was far from complete but I really don't know. Mentally, I wrote off my AP balance about 2 months ago, but I still reserve a small amount of hope I get it back one day.

This isn't possible. Many accounts do not have the amounts listed in the civil case.

I believe, though I haven't ever verified this, that the accounts with amounts listed are actually all from prior seizures and do not include any accounts actually seized for the first time on Black Friday.

booyah

on fbook chat just now. as an old msnl ub reg i thought it was funny and worth posting. buddy works at a weed clinic in socal

friend: oh!
friend: dude.
friend: funny story. one of the owners of UB is a member at my shop
me: wait really?
friend: yea dude
me: an owner??
me: who
friend: yes
friend: xxxxx something
me: how much have you talked to him
friend: a lot
friend: well i remember him cuz he was stocking up for coachella
friend: then i guess the next day he came back to stock up more. and my partner was like... y arent u at coachella??
friend: and hes like umm my websites getting shut down and gettin the **** outa the country
friend: he was about to be endidted
friend: but he gave up like 9 mil and his house n ****
me: that is so ****ing weird. small world
friend: yea dude.. crazy
me: does he seem like a cool guy?
friend: well he was saying his partner jacked a bunch of money and took off
friend: but im sure he has a couple mill stashed away somehwere
friend: he drops lke 500 evertime he comes in
friend: so hes obviousy doin ok
friend: yaaa hes a cool guy
friend: kinda nerdy
friend: he said hes gotten massive amount of death threats
me: does he still come in?
friend: oh ya
me: **** that's so ****in funny
me: k us open back on ttyl

I couldn't find it either, but when I had this discussion with one of your writers he said he had located at least $11 million. This was earlier in the summer so maybe more clarification has come since then. Considering the amount of work SP put into this mess I had no reason to doubt the info.

that weed store story sounds about as believable as pokeraddicts misinterpreted bank account info

You guys forget I worked for Absolute Poker for years and knew quite a few people there on the inside including Brent and Scott. I was screaming all over this forum warning people about Scott Tom even before the first cheating scandal was ever exposed. Among other things, go search the user "Pokermachine" in the archives and you will see what I mean. I tried my best to keep people away from this scandal waiting to happen well before Potripper came to light.

I reported info told to me months ago by one of the people involved with SP who had done more research than I have about the indictments. He was actually correcting a mistake in the comments section of my blog. I posted the correction and it has never come into question until now. That comment has been on my blog since June 14th. Knowing how these people operated I had no reason to doubt it.

Take it or leave it, but you're dreaming if you think Cereus had separate player deposit accounts and operating accounts. They had defaulted on interest payments on what looks like about $350,000,000 worth of debt before Black Friday even happened and they were also months behind on affiliate payments. Both are sure signs of serious financial issues.

I'm sorry so many people got scammed but to accuse me of being full of **** when I've been on top of this situation for years is harsh. If someone gave me bad info I'm sorry, nothing in this business is perfect. I've been a player advocate since RRR launched in 2004 and try to look out for scam sites and help players avoid them. Trying to help people who made a serious risk with their money and lost is probably not the best of ideas but it is in my nature. I should have just said "I told you so" and not tried at all.

I'm not pursuing the case anymore (took down the blog, etc) but check this thread because I am interested in how things turn out.

I don't know how much the DoJ froze, but I did get the numbers for the SP article on how big the liabilities were and how much cash they had. Since I am no longer working the case, I will say I received this information via Shay Prasad. Perhaps someone like GuiGui can explain Shay's role in the firm and why his numbers are likely to be correct.

Personally, I don't believe the DoJ was able to freeze much UB/AP money at all for several reasons. First, before BF, the company was already dealing with a possible shareholder action out of Norway so it is likely they moved funds to protect against an asset seizure (btw a significant hurdle even if assets someday show up).

Second, the original intent of the merger got hijacked when the AP cheating was discovered. By 2009, it was clear that the AP guys were the bagholders and now culpable for assisting the coverup. They thought they could right the ship and end up clean on the other end but instead watched the UB guys get away clean with millions of dollars while not realizing a big payday themselves.

In the end, it looks like eight or nine UB founders ended up taking ~$40M from players in the cheating scandal with some founders also doing similarly well in the IPO. On the AP side, there appeared to be a ~$50M hole between cash on hand and liabilities and my belief is this money was disbursed to the four AP founders and several friends including the fathers of Hilt and Scott. Choosing Panama as a financial backstop was a good idea since the country is one of the few which still respects banking privacy.