tamiller - What you describe is a situation so volatile, so dynamic, with so many critical issues and with so many independent individual persons or organizations having the power to block it, and others acting in the shadows to sabotage any agreement, that it may be impossible to resolve in a unified, global agreement. In the absence of such an agreement, it will get resolved in a piecemeal manner; probably not an optimal result for anyone but sometimes the only way to resolve such messes.

One example: If DOJ is determined that the indicted owners and executives must plead to something and the judge is of the mind to sentence to some substantial terms, it is going to be very difficult to get these executives to agree to their own imprisonment.

Another: If the EU countries demand back taxes from PS and FTP, it makes a purchase less appealing.

Another: If better politically connected competitors can block them from the US market, the incentive to pay anything is diminished. If that's the case the only reason to negotiate is to lessen the fine amount and keep the owners out of jail.

I hope they can put this together but I'm growing less hopeful.

Thanks markks, and it does sound like the DOJ must have been willing to make those concessions at the time China-Mark made his forecast, but DOJ concessions aren't worth the paper they are written on if the court isn't willing to sign off on them.

Given the fact that Kaplan wants to make an upwards departure from the Beckley agreement which already involves prison time for the same offense, it's hard to imagine him signing off on an agreement that would essentially purchase a 'pardon' for Scheinberg as some have reported.

husker and china on ignore makes this thread alot less painful fwiw

Unfortunately, our money's not tied up. It's straight up stolen. We're hoping a benevolent force will swoop in and pay us all back in the name of capitalism, but as for our original money...it's gone.

If I were PS, I'd narrow my goals to lessening the fines and keeping the execs out of jail or getting minimal sentences and forget anything else unless it aided those two issues.

I totally agree, one can look at each of your scenarios in a vacuum and say they aren't 'deal killers', but when you add them all up, maybe just being "POKER" to the rest of the world isn't such a crappy legacy if they were to take their case to a jury instead of writing a billion dollar check.

People will argue that they could fight the tax issues by working out the deal in a way that they aren't buying the company but only it's assets, and some say who cares if the judge slaps Scheinberg with prison time at sentencing since they can't extradite him, and one could argue that there are still doors open and legislators to 'lobby' for possible U.S. re-entry, but guys like Scheinberg get where they are betting on sure things - raking the game rather than playing it.

In my mind this deal went from China's 99.9% May 1 to at best a coinflip today.

Bye bye china man!!!!!

I think you really nailed it in your edit, whether the deal was 99.9% or .9%, you would want the people you were paying to work as if the deal were 100%, I mean, people just naturally work harder when there is a sense of urgency, so no harm done telling them 'the deal could be announced at any moment' so that they keep plugging away in preparation.

I don't believe for one second that 'Chinamaniac' just invented this elaborate story, he was on a podcast after 'super Tuesday' when the story was leaked in which he made statements that made it clear he wasn't even aware that PokerStars still had legal issues - as if by paying their players all charges had been dropped, and I'm convinced nobody that 'naive' invents an elaborate ruse.

-no anouncements
-some avatars changed
-blizzuff want to gamble up his phantommoney playing poker with people from this thread but still can't put his real money where his mouth is. guess he just don't has 25,50$ of real money!

You always know you did a good job of calling someone on something when they randomly try to take jabs at you days later in completely weird and non-sensical ways.

Are we there yet?

Nope. Told you china is full of trash. Anyway, lets play poker buddy. Where can i find you?

The criminal indictment against Scheinberg and the civil case against PS are two separate cases brought by the DOJ. It's unlikely that any monetary agreement between Stars and the DOJ resolving the civil complaint will involve any plea bargain deal for Scheinberg in the criminal indictment.

Also remember that that the DOJ isn't just going after PS for a billion(or w/e it was) in the civil case but was in fact going after all that Stars the company has. Stars will do want to settle the civil complaint with the DOJ before the courts do or they risk loosing it all.

As for PS buying FTP from the DOJ I'm not sure how the higher-ups at the DOJ and/or the courts would view the deal. It could be the court/DOj see it as just another asset purchase as part of the settlement deal for Stars. Or they might block stars from buying FTP, not wanting an indicted criminal enterprise to profit or whatever off their illicit activities or w/e other reasons they come-up with. Stars trying to buy FTP as part of the civil complaint negotiations has to complicate the matter greatly.

Looks like all the Pocket Kings/Full Tilt Poker jobs have been removed now from the Irish jobs website they were posted on and there are multiple rumours flying around in the employment agency industry today that everyone that was hired on the 2 month contracts recently have been told the contracts will not be renewed and to look for a new job.

Maybe these potential deal breakers that keep popping up might very well be big problems.

**** my life

Lets hope so...

WHERE IZ MY MONEY BITCHES ? yeah nice first message i know.

If Stars were advanced enough in the deal [if there is one] to consider relocating staff/positions to IOM within weeks, we would have already had the announcement.

Nova,

While correct (two separate cases) and logical on paper, several sites reported (Wicked Chops, Gambling Intelligence, e.g.) that Stars is negotiating for a package deal in which both the criminal and civil cases are cleared up simultaneously in return for a large fine and cleaning up the FTP financial mess.

Some 'industry experts' on podcasts were going as far as to say that after writing a $750M check, Isai would be free to travel to Vegas for the World Series, but I don't know if PS actually believed that or if leaking these ideas was some kind of PR attempt by PS to rally FTP victims to put pressure on the DOJ to accept their demands.

It's even possible the DOJ had already conceded to PS demands before the leak, that's certainly the spin they were projecting, but FTP with their usual bad timing may have tried to use the situation to negotiate similar concessions for their own clients and in the mean time all the recent negative news has forced PS to reevaluate.

As for trial risk, other than possibly re-seizing the .com domain, even if they lose, the DOJ doesn't really have much leverage over a foreign company which no longer has assets in the U.S., besides barring them from market re-entry which some jurisdictions (CA,NJ) seem bent on doing even were they to be found innocent.

The fact that PS actually seems to believe that a jury will buy some or all of their 'our lawyers said it was legal' defense also makes them seem less likely to be concerned about risk, so whether the deal gets done is more likely to turn on the issue of reward - $900M would be a lot to spend on some good publicity.

I viewed the best reward in this deal to be keeping FTP out of the hands of a competitor, and they've already accomplished that goal, and surely with the assets being deemed unable to be rehabilitated through ownership change in some U.S. states, and at least one EU state (so far) requiring back taxes before licensing, we won't be seeing any new suitors if PS backs out.

shhhh!! ... c'mon man, rule number one, don't tap the glass!

My understanding is the PS is trying to allow themselves back into the US market after regulation. So I would think that the best reward would be the fact that they could have two separate companies attaching itself to American companies and have the market cornered.

No offence taken, we Irish have thick skin.

I work within the employment industry in Dublin and have even placed people in Tilt over the last few years so when from one place or another get told something that I can verify that I feel should be made public then I'll make it public for a couple reasons.

The first reason obviously is that anybody with money locked up on the site deserves every bit of info they can get. That goes without saying. They deserve to know everything thats out there for sure.

The second reason is that I know from chattin to several people still there in Tilt, that outwith a single digit amount of people that know whats going on inside PK with the Stars deal etc, the rest of the staff rely on this site for information because no one tells them a single thing! There are people in there with families and young children that have been treated like idiots for nearly a year now, they're an innocent party aswell.

If I didnt post it someone else would have because its all out there.

seriously, why should this a sign for big problems (well, except for the ppl who don't get a new contract)

pretty meaningless, if you don't know how important these positions are (wasn't it software designer & support staff ?) ... that can mean, that the negotiation are ongoing or finished (good or bad end), so basically it says nothing imo

It could be meaningless, it could be meaningful. Just puttin it out there.

Lots of various positions ranging from customer care right through to game production operations managers were online recently btw
.

Pretty much all of the release/deployment/production/it/server/db teams went to paddypower, a TON of those roles were online previous to today on a few different websites. Now their not.

I have had you on ignore list for around 6 months now, and the bleeding from my eyes has just about stopped.

Maybe I reported your avatars? Maybe I didnt?

Either way, I'm so happy right now