Quote:
Originally Posted by Lego05
But you might want to look into your general practice of how you sell inventory to retailers without getting money immediately and without having a security interest in such inventory. Seems nuts to me to not at least try to put a lien on the inventory you sell for which you do not get immediate payment.
Vendors like 2+2 rarely, if ever have that kind of marketing power. Borders would have told Mason, "no problem, we won't sell your books." While 2+2 is big in the poker world, 2+2 even at the height of the poker boom didn't even represent a rounding error on Borders' sales and profit figures.
As for the thread, I only met Chris Ferguson once. I was playing a donkament at the Aladdin a long time age. FTP must have held some sort of contest to play in a one table invitational event. This was long before the millions came in as evidenced by the fact they were playing at the Aladdin poker room. Ferguson was there to shake hands with the players in the invitational tournament.
He was clearly an introvert. As soon as the initial hand shaking was done, he sat down at another table by himself and started eating a sandwich. However, he was happy to speak with anyone that came up to say hello to him. He seemed like a nice guy overall. A couple of the dealers had known him for years and stated that they liked him because he was kind to dealers unlike many other pros.
As for the FTP debacle itself, it starts with accounting. As people sent money to them, they recorded it as funds that was in their possesion. However, processors started stealing or getting those funds seized. It is a judgement call as to when the accountants decide to report those losses since in theory they could be recoverable. It seems clear now that Pokerstars was far more diligent about recording those losses as they occurred than FTP was.
So when looking at a top level profit and loss statement, no one would have suspected anything was wrong. Even the balance sheet would have looked good at the top level. Someone would have had to dig the next level down to see that more and more of the cash was sitting at the processors and asked why. Since most poker players don't even have a college degree of any sort (let alone an accounting or finance degree), it isn't surprising they never saw this.
That said, someone in FTP knew what they were doing was wrong. Bitar is the most likely culprit, either overtly (don't write those off) or indirectly (we need to show a profit this month).
The best analogy I can come up for the players is while they didn't steal the money, it was as if they wandering around a high crime area late at night flashing millions of dollars and being surprised that somebody robbed them. Very bad judgement on them. And bad judgement on anyone letting them handle their money.