Yeah. I assume there was quantitative data available that would have suggested their operation was exposing the poker community to existential risk. That's why Chris shouldn't have been fooled.

It's possible that he and Lederer were more concerned with the technical/software side and thought they were hiring people to care about the financial stuff so that they didn't have to deal with it.

I think one point is mostly all that matters (much more than what Jesus knew or didnt know, what he did or didn't do)

A company for which he was co-founder, major shareholder , likely other operational role(s) as well, stole money from players.

Its alleged that after the company failed, Ferguson left with millions and millions and millions.

He was enriched with money stolen from players.

if true, then what else matters.

DIMOND FLUSH POKER - Best journalist who investigated Full Tilt and Black Friday!!
Good read for Mason….

http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...lederer-files/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...files-part-ii/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...iles-part-iii/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...files-part-iv/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...-files-part-v/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/10...files-part-vi/
http://diamondflushpoker.com/2012/11...iles-part-vii/

Now if someone goes and makes the cliff notes version of this then that would be amazing..
People I wish would speak out are;
Phil Gordon
Phil Ivey
Andy Bloch

One cliff I have though is Lederer and Ferguson are both scum

I knew Diamond Flush and had communication with her. After she passed away, I spoke on her behalf at the iGaming North America Conference which had a lunch dedicated to her where I said she'll be greatly missed. So I'm quite familiar with her work on this topic.

Mason

MAIN CLIFF NOTE

Ferguson as chair of the FTP board knew about the dodgy payment processing, the 250 million backlog, FTP not segregating player funds and mixing it with OPEX, the Board making dividend payments out of the players funds while knowing their was a backlog, ferguson and lederer pretended they didn’t know anything (which was debunked by chad elie) and just gave the most weak assed apology I have ever seen.

Detailed Cliffs to the best of my ability..

• Processing Poker Funds pre-Black Friday required payment processers who could disguise the e-check transactions from the banks. Due to them knowing that UIGEA was a very grey area.. – Note party poker existed the US market when UIGEA came into existence
• Full Tilt used Intabill (Daniel Tzvetkoff ) and Chad Elie - Pokernews interview from 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRSqBtDvVo8
• Intabill would disguise e-check transactions from the banks – made it look like Full Tilt funds were golf equipment transactions, flower shops etc.
• Tzvetkoff apparently cheated Full tilt and Pokerstars out of at least 100 million dollars. They tried to sue him.. he got out of the US..
• Intabill fell over and Tzvetkoff got arrested when he came back in the country for money laundering, bank fraud, and wire fraud
• Tzvetkoff was let go a few months later in August 2010. He reportedly turned over state's evidence (on the poker companies) after being threatened with a 75-year prison sentence
• Full Tilt took hits from multiple seizures and thefts in the 2 years prior to black friday
• More and more Payment Processors stopped processing funds for Full Tilt and becomes harder and harder for them to process deposits and withdrawals.
• Players were depositing funds into Full Tilt that were not actually processed. So if I deposited $100 I would get $100 in my FTP account without my credit card being charged
• 130,000 Full tilt players benefited from this ‘free money’.. which equated to over 250 million by Black Friday. – known as THE BACKLOG
• This 250 million worth of deposits were not able to be processed because the number of payment processors for Full tilt became less and less.
• Player Funds at Full Tilt were NEVER segregated into special bank accounts
• When the Backlog begin months before black Friday, Fullt tilt board continued to give out dividends increasing the backlog by stealing from the players funds effectiviliy
• The last dividend occurred 2 weeks before black Friday!
• The board consisted of Ferguson, Lederer, Bitar and Furst – Feguson was the chair
• In June 2011 several owners tried to remove the current board and Ray bitar as CEO. These owners consisted of the likes of Phil Gordon, Phil Ivey and Andy Bloch
• Phil Gordon was horrified to find that “the board was going to receive a salary of $ 20,000. per month, to be on the board, that’s per month, per person. So $ 60,000. per month”
• This was the current boards plan (2 months after black Friday) that Lederer and Ferguson were going top leach that player fund dry #scum
• Phil Ivey actually had a 4 million member loan from full tilt. Again adding to the backlog and taken out of player funds by Lederer. Apparently lots of people on this player loan excel spreadsheet…
• Group Bernied Taipe were going to buy FTP and bailed after seeing how bad the rabbit hole was…
• Pokerstars became the white knight
• If Pokerstars did not make players whole Chris Ferguson and Lederer would have likely been attacked by poker players in the US by now… (opinion)
• Ferguson as chair of the FTP board knew about the dodgy payment processing, the 250 million backlog, FTP not segregating player funds and mixing it with OPEX, the Board making dividend payments out of the players funds while knowing their was a backlog, pretended he didn’t know anything and said the most weak assed apology I have ever seen.
• 7 years later we get a weak apology from Chris Ferguson. Probably worse than the lederer one on pokernews interviews (didn't think it was possible because lederer barely said sorry or took any ownership of wrongdoing)..

I don't know about you Mason but I think their actions were greedy and disgusting.

Diamond/Flush was/is amazing so i'm jealous you got to know her. I think she did fantastic work on this FTP investigation and hope her work is seen by this forum.

yeah Dflush was pumping cliffs at the time. good stuff

Hi cheehc:

First, thanks for doing this.

Now, let me make a few comments:

1. I hardly know Ferguson and have little understanding of what his role at FTP was. I do agree that his apology is insufficient, but am hopeful that it is a first step for much more from him. However, I seem to be the only one with this opinion, time will tell.

2. Howard Lederer also did an interview with us. You can listen to it here:

https://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/lis...hp?episode=239

3. I think it's fair to say that Lederer disputes some of Diamond's findings and conclusions. By the way, and this is important, even though I hold the late Diamond Flush in the highest regard, much of her work, and correct me if I have this wrong, was based on sources. and given the FTP mess, I don't know if you can conclude that her sources were always 100 percent accurate.

4. While completely unrelated to FTP, my opinion of Phil Gordon is quite negative.

5. I don't think that $20,000 per month for a board member from a company that was the size of FTP is an excess, and this opinion of mine holds even if they didn't do much.

6. Lending money, like the supposed $4 million to Ivey, who I don't know at all, is ridiculous, but I don't think it's illegal. But I guess this is what happens when you have high stakes poker players involved at the top who are use to passing large amounts of money back and forth to each other.

Best wishes,
Mason

Did anyone at FTP know how to run a business? Sounds like a bunch of drunken poker buddies got together to build an online site and soon found themselves way over their heads with no clue on how a business operates. Rather than educate themselves or hire a credible person to run it for them, they decided to milk it for all it was worth by tapping all the funds coming in for their personal gain. Hire a couple crooked lawyers and faux business types to teach you how to circumvent the law and you’re left with the FTP fiasco.

Regardless of Ferguson’s or anyone elses clear lack of business acumen, it should have been apparent to all of them what they were doing was wrong and unsustainable. They knew this but did it anyway knowing the jig would be up sooner or later so they might as well profit while they can.

I think they dodged a bullet from the DOJ but that shouldn’t excuse them knowingly doing wrong. I’m the forgiving type so I won’t be harassing anyone at the tables or other such nonsense. But I’m also not the forgetting type so trusting Ferguson or welcoming him back with open arms also isn’t going to happen. They should all go their own ways, play in private high stake games, and avoid playing in major tournaments with the masses they bilked out of millions of dollars. To expect people to act as though everything is water under the bridge is both arrogant and naive.

lol, would of probably went over just as well.

surprised Chris didnt get in the 300k SHRB

You shouldn't be surprised, thanks to his theft and fraud at Full Tilt Poker it is not as though he needs to win money at poker these days.

wow missed this somehow

• Players were depositing funds into Full Tilt that were not actually processed. So if I deposited $100 I would get $100 in my FTP account without my credit card being charged
• 130,000 Full tilt players benefited from this ‘free money’.. which equated to over 250 million by Black Friday. – known as THE BACKLOG
• This 250 million worth of deposits were not able to be processed because the number of payment processors for Full tilt became less and less.

That puzzles me too. So players could make a deposit and get FT $ but not actually pay for it ?

Wouldn’t that have led to tonnes of people making multiple big deposits once they realised?

IIRC that's exactly what happened when some people twigged.

And oh my god that video - zero sincerity.

To me, the casualness with which they apparently treated millions of dollars belonging to other people is indictment enough of their actions that they should forever remain away from our sport. In my opinion the fact that they keep themselves rich when they could return even half of their money and stay rich shows a lack character today.

I remember this happening to me a couple of times. I never even considered making multiple deposits for the "free money" I had received. My guess is that the vast majority of depositors were recs like myself that were only able to deposit $100 or so every few months.

I really shouldn't have been depositing what I was so the idea of making multiple deposits would have been too risky. if I started depositing more and it eventually went through, I would have been in a world of hurt.

I may have made 3 withdrawals and 20 deposits total. So, while it was "free money" there wasn't much risk in me taking anything off the site. So, maybe this was just another way the scheme was stretched out.

So, they may have let small deposits like mine go through but held larger ones until it actually processed? Probably 100x more people like me than y'all crushers who really got screwed by FTP in the end.

Does anyone know when this started where people could deposit and not be charged money? Was it long before Black Friday?

Also did full tilt know Black Friday was coming or have any idea? I feel full tilt has to be pulling in so much money that even their shoddy practices would
Have been fine if the us govt never stepped in. It was odd how they ran double gguarantees and Mets before Black Friday.


Meh i still hate how Black Friday occurred without any real warning. PokerStars and full tilt were such well run sites in terms of mtt, sng, and cash volume. Playing online poker in the US after Black Friday has been a joke compared to stars/tilt days.

If Chris Ferguson has been welcomed back to the WSOP with open arms then why not Russ Hamilton as well?

Seems to me they are both good guys who are just misunderstood.

RIP Diamond, gone but not forgotten.

Russ isnt welcome back because the pokerworld is full of hypocrites.
If i had to guess Id say 95% of all pokerplayers would use superusing powers to their advantage... Those people also trash on Russ, sad

You best believe that many people "at the top" watched the cashflows and participated in discussions following major events, like a processor stiffing the company out of $400 million.

Accounting for player liability is routine and updated in real time, with at least daily reporting.

The assets side, and aggregate processor/banking assets, is not necessarily tracked or valued as accurately. Still, it begs credulity that questions from the Board or owners were not raised/addressed when something major, like a failure to process cashouts or Tdzvetikoff stiffing FTP arose.

If he put up $5 million for a freeroll for FTP players who had more than $500 in their accounts on bf, I would accept that he was sorry even though it would still be too little, too late.

It smacks of arrogance, but it is not naive as people, especially poker players, will act that way, by and large.

less than 12 hours to step up Chris ...

the clock is ticking ...