Same questions were in a UK survey about a month ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1XqqfHYHjU&feature=plcp

In your home game, playing with cash, the minute you lay claim to any of the money on the table, you admit to playing, which is probably a crime in your local jurisdiction. So you are never making any such claim.

For online in this case, we are talking about federal crimes being charged here, many of them. There is no federal statute stating that playing online poker is illegal for the player.

If the funds were properly segregated and labeled/escrowed as player funds, they would not have been recognized as being owned by the poker sites, hence no seizure of those. We already know that FTP did not do this. If PokerStars did that, that was a way of protecting those accounts. If they had been frozen, under those circumstances, players would have been able to have standing to make a claim for those funds by July 15 of last year. we never got that far, because PS repaid everyone PDQ. For FTP and AP/UB, since the funds were not protected and segregated, even if they included a billion dollars in funds, enough to pay everyone, since the funds were commingled, players still would have had no standing to stake any claim because you could never prove that that was YOUR money.

No they did not. While they did continue to serve US customers, which apparently they had reason to believe was legal, they did not spend your money, commingle it with operating and personal funds, or pay their owners, shareholders or sponsored pros with your money until it was almost gone.

As for the DOJ freezing/seizing accounts that are protected and segregated, I think that has already been answered.


No and No. And I totally feel for everyone that is out even $1, let alone thousands or much more, but if you have really been following this story from day 1, you wouldn't say these things, since all of these things have been explained by many many people so many times over the last year, it's impossible to count. Please stop.

Dude, I know you're in full on suicide-mode right now, and I feel for you, I really do, but you need to ban yourself from this thread. You've evolved into "read the thread everyday and somehow conclude that whatever has been posted means the deal is dead and I'm never getting my money back, and then make a 'FML' post" guy. It's not healthy.

Here's your plan of attack:

Take out a deck of cards and set it next to your monitor. Every time you read this thread, draw four cards. Then, do a bodyweight circuit based on the cards you draw:

Heart: Push-Ups
Diamond: Burpee
Club: Prisoner Squat
Spade: Mountain-Climbers (or Pull-ups if you have a pull-up bar and can do them)

Each card is worth it's numeric value, face cards are worth ten, Aces are worth 15.

So if you draw 4, J, 8, A you do:

4 Pushups + 10 Prisoner Squats + 8 Pushups + 15 Mountain Climbers/Pull-Ups

And if you ever let yourself make a post that has no content other than something to the effect of "FML guess I can kiss my money goodbye, looks like it's over", you have to do the entire deck of cards.

In fact, I think we should all do this. Who's in?

Order of the following things happening?

1) We know something definite about the faith of our money, meaning either someone buys FTP or FTP files for bankruptcy

2) Thread reaches 30k posts/300 pages

3) Someone overtakes hdemet as the top poster in this thread


I'm guessing 2, 1, 3

Why do I feel like there are going to be a lot of ripped up juice-head looking poker players in the coming months?

Hey guys, it's D-day. I have a good feeling we get good news in the course of this day.

Elaborate?

Everybody is entitled to one rant. But enough is enough.

The USA/DOJ is not responsible for:

• FTP misappropriating player funds;
• Your lack of job skills.

Don't bother trying to understand this; just accept it.

Odd optimism from someone that made a post looking to sell FTP funds yesterday.

No, but they are responsible for consolidating the market to where so much money was invested in FTP (and killing any chance for a smooth exit/FTP to clean up).

HAHAH holy crap good idea... although i lift 5 days a week so idk if i'll be able to handle this, but still gonna give cred where cred is due... genuis

I really like the basic idea here, but would like to suggest some minor modifications:

♣ you drink that number of beers
♦ you drink that many shots of jack daniels
♥ you drink that many shots of tequila
♠ you drink that many long island iced teas

You can still do the sit ups and other stuff, but they won't hurt when you do them (might be some discomfort the next day).

No. FTP killed any chance for a smooth exit, by commingling and misappropriating player deposits for their own salaries and bonuses.

You can whine about DOJ all you want, but nothing changes that unalterable fact.

DOJ did not consolidate the U.S. online poker market, either. Companies leaving the market, so as to not flout United States law (which is passed by Congress and the President, not by the Department of Justice), allowed the market to consolidate itself.

You really think US government is totally blameless in this whole mess? Bottom line is that people should have freedom to play online poker. If the US government hadn't taken away that freedom by enforcing a stupid law and kicked out legitimate companies from US market, none of this mess would have happened. Sometimes you just wonder don't they have more meaningful things to do instead of messing with our lives?
Of course, the actions of US government by no means lessen the guilt of those FTP owners. US government basically created a grey environment where scumbags like Lederer and Bitar can thrive.

Er, are you saying it's the US's fault that one of the companies that openly violated US law also turned out to be a bunch of crooks?

Please think before you type.

<-------today the penny finally drops<------

you can't trust any1 in poker.

Oh Whoa. I just try to bring a positive note in this thread.

they not trying making money too.

why?

paying money to stop chargers (which i like)but its not how laws should be in forced

The U.S. government did not entice the criminals at FTP to steal your money. If you want to blame the congressment who inserted UIGEA into must-pass legislation, fine. But once passed, it's not the government's "fault" that DOJ enforces the law. It's the government's "job" for DOJ to enforce the law.

Look, just because you're some anarcho capitalist type who can't stand the idea that there is a functioning government, does not make everything that happens that you disagree with, the government's fault.

Nothing wrong with doing that but make sure your post makes it clear you are just speculating at random, people have leaked information in this thread before, so something positive that is not clearly just random speculation can get the crowd going.

The US laws target operators. The government's position is that it is not OK for any Tom, Dick, Harry or other slimeball to set up shop in the IOM or some other far off land and offer what is effectively totally unregulated gambling to it's citizens. Do you really think they don't have the right to enforce this position?

As good as Diamond's explanation was, it probably doesn't help those that didn't understand it the other hundred times it was posted ITT, so maybe a less legalistic analogy would help:

Let's say there are two companies, PotStars and Full Tilt Pot, both get legal opinions saying that they can sell 'medical' marijuana.

They both begin planting and accepting deposits from customers with the promise that those deposits would be secure, and could be requested at any time up until the pot was delivered.

Then the FBI comes in prior to harvest (rake) and says that "no, we don't agree with your lawyers" and seize the pot and the bank accounts.

Potstars has all the deposits held in accounts designated as deposits, so even if the DOJ didn't authorize PotStars to return their deposits, customers could have filed innocent ownership claims to recover their money.

Full Tilt Pot took a different approach, keeping as little cash available on deposit in secret accounts as they might need for occasional withdrawal requests, divided up the rest as 'profits' and spent them.

So when the DOJ said 'go ahead an repay your customers' and you can continue selling pot where it is legal, there was no money left to do it - in fact, they had also spent the deposits from the customers where selling pot was legal.

Did PotStars get 'lucky' that they didn't treat deposits as profits, or was Full Tilt Pot fraudulent for counting deposits as profits after assuring their customers that they were segregated?

Except for that one 'minor' difference , they both did the same thing.