http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...hing-down.html

some color on the payment processors. and article mentions book

You are welcome.

1. There was never any public revelation on how the deal came to fruition. That was private between the DOJ and PS. IMO, it was Pokerstars who brought ownership of the FTP assets to the table. There probably wasn't a big difference in the net cost to PS, i.e. it was likely thrown in for a nominal figure. Really a great move by PS to acquire their biggest competitor at the time. Although the FTP site petered out in the long run, it no doubt added a significant amount of value for their $4.9B sale negotiations with Amaya.

2. Passage of the UIGEA prompted enforcement of anti-gambling laws by the DOJ against online gambling/poker. The motivating forces behind the UIGEA were: agenda of the conservative right; protection by state governors of in-state vested interests (b&m casinos, race tracks, lotteries, etc.); lobbying by major sports teams, especially the NFL, mainly to protect the Fantasy Sports industry, which generates huge advertising revenues for the sports team by greatly increasing tv viewership of their games; and the b&m gambling vested interest themselves (casinos, race tracks, etc.) to squash the competition for gambling dollars. Plus, the money seizures and settlements themselves were great motivation for the DOJ personnel, who are largely judged, rewarded and promoted based on total dollar amounts they bring into the government coffers. Tzvetkoff certainly played a major role in the success of the DOJ to bring about the seizures and indictments of Black Friday, but he was a break in the case they needed, not the original impetus for them to pursue the issue.

3. I've never seen any confirmed details about the breakdown of the amounts received by each FTP owner and pro, individually. Dwan not long after Black Friday publicly promised (voluntarily) to return $1M of his sponsorship money, to be used for reimbursing US players if the players weren't otherwise made whole by FTP. Although a nice gesture, it wasn't practical in the long run - how would it be divied up among the many thousands of players, for one. I think his heart was in the right place, and it was probably meant to prompt other owners and pros to make similar pledges. He never had to make good on the promise, since the PS settlement provided all the funds needed to refund all the US players.

can someone point out to me that big thread where resitution was made to the players. I cant recall for the life of me what it is called.

A company took over to process what was owed to the players.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...ight=remission

The book is pretty accurate, James did a great job.

He looked for help on this very forum: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-help-1189784/

That's the trouble with USA citizens owning poker sites (Just about every big scandal / shutdown has been Americans owning the company - sure there's one or two from ROW but 90%+ are US scams with Full Tilt being the biggest Ponzi in poker history) And all these sites are still regulated in Alderney; the only outlier is USA ownership; no other poker site since has bull****ted the amount of player funds held on deposit ('segregated funds') - just Howard

+1 for your report concerning the 'phantom deposits' which only benefited the US players at the time - imagine being able to ship an imaginary (phantom) $5k to Full Tilt..playing the funds and the ca$h never leaving your checking account (from memory USA phantom deposits totaled $530m of unrecoverable funds that were gambled at the poker tables - happy days )

cliff notes: Full Tilt was a Ponzi scheme , bailed out by pokerstars everyone got paid that I know of

Wow sad revival. Remember that sight like it was yesterday. (Not so) good old days

Not everyone. Anyone could sign up to be an affliate and offer rakeback to new players. While there were some big players in that arena, many people signed up a couple of people or even none at all. Since they were in theory business partners with FTP, they received nothing from the settlement for their personal accounts.

back at this time I could actually win at poker, given, it was only .25/.50 but I could still afford to pay for my own cell phone. I never had enough money during the closure to play abroad, so I played on the small janky sites serving americans and have been losing ever since. it was not a good day for me looking back!