It is possible that Bitar holds a working visa in Ireland. He loses his legal status to stay long-term in the country once he loses his job in Ireland.

I thought you were referring to another extension being filed. If there was going to be one, it might be expected today as the last one was filed on a Friday before the Monday deadline.

Ahhhh, that makes sense, figured he had dual citizenship/permanent residency

Wow. Just read this. The prosecutors are really turning up the heat.

Makes me wonder if their strategy is to get Bitar to plea and rat out major FTP shareholders like Lederer, Gordon, Ferguson etc...

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal...64/377900/187/

"The Government respectfully writes to request a brief adjournment of certain upcoming deadlines in this action in order to facilitate, and hopefully, to successfully conclude, certain ongoing settlement communications."

Haha, well unless I'm misreading it, the latest motion sheds some light on why April 15th was the date they picked.

"Bitar then cancelled a reservation he had made for travel to the United States in early March and, for the first time since he had relocated to Ireland, failed to return to the United States in advance of his April 14 birthday."

So I guess they were all set to go and hoping to pick him up, then after realizing he wasn't coming decided **** it lets go.

If you are not an Irish citizen, permanent resident, or citizen of a country in the EU (?), you can't just stay in Ireland without a job forever. He was likely in Ireland on a work visa. I doubt they'd be inclined to grant him some other kind of visa under these circumstances. Maybe he could have taken a job at a Red Lobster (or the Irish equivalent).

You are one of the top 25 posters in this thread(number of posts). So you obviously followed this thread very closely. I'm sure you've heard people smarter than you and closer to the situation then you, say Ray is working on getting players repaid.

For all the time you've put in here, your post above reeks of someone who is uninformed. Way to waste your time for the last 15 months.

lol yeah, but pretty encouraging to hear Preet confirm that the stars deal was about to happen

Post a link were He says this.

click the scribd link

I like your posting style in this one so much better. It is easier to come to grips with.

That's the post in its entirety. with my added bolding.

I reacted to the juxtaposition of the two bolded statements. Nowhere in that post did you explain that your brilliant mind, with its economics background and higher than kindergaren education, had figured out that bets were not deposits, that the market size mentioned in the second statement was measured in different terms than the $1.4B in the first sentence, and also differently from the ususal way of measuring a market, which is revenues. There is nothing here from which we can conclude that you knew, when you posted those statements, that the $1.4B to $30B comparison was apples to oranges. Furthermore, since we don't have a useful conversion factor from bets to deposits (I pulled 10:1 out of my ass, but it might just as well be 2.5:1 or 20:1), there seems to be no obvious way of concluding $1.4B deposits per year is disappointing in a market having $30B in annual bets, so no point in making the comparison unless you mistakenly thought the two figures were comparable.

For purposes of continuing a discusssion aimed at getting a better estimate of FTP's deposits, revenue and profit, I am willing to take you at your word if you assert that you knew that a market size measured in bets is a larger number than the same market measured in deposits which gives a bigger number than the same market measured in revenue. Furthermore, I am even willing to consider that you may have a useful way of converting from bets to deposits so we can validly concude that $1.4B in annual deposits is disappointing in a market with $30B in annual bets. If you do, please share it with us.

I think we have a terminology problem here. I think one third or more over $3 is $4+. You seem to mean $1+. I think we would say "one third or more of" if we meant $1+.

Anyway, even not knowing this one line from a 21 line post amoung > 21 other posts, it is clear just from reading the article that bets aren't deposits. I still don't see how that article about betting rate helps us conclude anything useful about FTP's deposits, revenue or profit, other than putting a $30B ceiling well over their heads.

Man, that's poorly written. Are you sure I wrote that? Must have been my sleep-deprived evil twin. Let me attempt a rewrite and amplification to clarify:

The DoJ is not seeking the earnings. The DoJ is not seeking the revenue. In principle, what the DoJ is seeking is either the portion of deposits that FTP actually received or the even larger amount of deposits actually made. It is not clear how that principle yields an amount of $1B.

The amount sought ($1B) is much larger (about $350M larger) than estimated possible annual revenue from US sources and very much larger (about $900M larger) than total earnings from all sources over the period in question. However, the amount sought is smaller than probable total revenue from US sources over the entire period, and is therefore less than total deposits over that period. We can therefore conclude that the $1B figure chosen by the DoJ does not seem to directly correspond with any of total deposits made, total deposits received, total revenue or total profit.

I am not sure we have proven that yearly deposits were already higher than $1B. Please show your work.

I don't know why you think we should take the word of an unsourced article regarding market size. I don't think we are certain about the $1.4B number at all. To get market revenue they would have had to aggregate either reports from, or estimates about, individual sites. We know that FTP lied about their finances. An estimate cannot be relied on to be accurate.

Let's assume for the moment that all those figures are correct (big assumption) other than the 35%. I presume you get 35% from the "more than one third of deposits" statement. We don't know how much more than one third that is supposed to be. Was "more than a third" a floor or an approximation? If they actually made revenues of 40% of deposits (40% satifies the "more thanone third" condition) then FTP's annual deposits from the US were < $1B. If the estimates for total market size or of FTP and Star's share is wrong or the estimate of the breakdown between FTP and Stars is wrong, extrapolations of deposits and revenue could be off by an order of magnitude.

If we make a whole bunch of assumptions, any of which could be wrong, we can get to a figure of about $2.5B for annual deposits. Working from different assumptions and different sets of evidence we can get numbers under $1B or approaching $10B. I see no reason to make the classic poker mistake of putting villain on a hand rather than on a range.

So are things looking good that no extension has been filed?

Has anyone posted the DOJ's June 29 letter to the court?

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/new...v02564/377900/

The letter requests an adjournment of some deadlines so the parties can continue and hopefully conclude certain "settlement discussions.

Sorry if mypony is really slow; I'm only checking up on things now and again.

How is what markksman said any different then what Diamond_Flush has said.
DF seems to think Bitar coming has no impact on the deal between DOJ/PS.

Yeah that was posted a while back. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the government's appeal of the order granting Bitar bail. They seem to make a pretty compelling case. iirc you have experience with these things. How likely is it that the appeal will be granted?

What I thought I questioned was an assertion that deposits were necessarily significantly greater than $1B annually. You, youself, below give us a range that is more below $1B than above it.

60% > "approx half" > "less than half"

I thought they kept about 60% (which is more than half) of their market. Do we have figures on lost traffic? Traffic in ROW could have been up (due to promotions) or down (due to concern about BF). For the $8-9M in weekly deposits to have been on less than half their previous volume, their ROW volume would have had to have declined by more than 16%. While it is quite possible it had done so, I don't think we should assume this.

Fair point. Do we have figures for the proportion of deposits not made by ACH transfers?

Because it wasn't $9M. It was $8-9M. And it wasn't half the traffic. It was 40% of the market. Without actual deposit rate information, what is "known" gives a better figure that is only about 75% of yours.

OK, so my conclusion is weak but you conclude a range with a midpoint of $0.95B while others suggest $1.4B, or $2B or more. I'm glad you concur approximately with the low end of my range. I'll let you deal with those who says it must be much higher than $1B.

Markksman said about 4 different things here. I don't believe DF, Noah or ZBT has absolutely stated anything other than his first sentence. In fact Noah and ZBT both stated Bitar was trying to get the players paid back by making a deal and marrksman should know this since he's a prolific and usually decent poster in this thread.

Bitar had money. He probably still has millions somewhere unaccounted for. If he wanted to run 15 months ago, he could have. Easily. While his first thought is prolly not getting players paid back, most likely its been on his mind a great deal over the last year+. If he only cared about a PR statement, he has had many many many chances to release plenty of info to 'save face(ivey lawsuit, GBT backing out of deal, etc).' I'm guessing PR is the last thing on his mind.

I absolutely think he's trying to get players refunded. If the general consensus here is the Isai is buying his freedom(or less of a sentence) with this deal, then why is it such a stretch that Bitar believes that if players get paid back, and he helps facilitate that deal, then the DOJ will look a bit more favorably with him as well when its his turn to be sentenced?

Given this: I'm not sure why we should accept that: Despite that, the following remains a good question (for which I do not have an anwer). Remember that the directors had a duty to know the actual financial condition of the the organization, a duty to estalish financial controls, a duty to direct the management, and a duty to approve distributions.

Possible, but I'm not certain about "likely". Until this week, one might have said that the absence of criminal fraud (against players) charges against Bitar despite his obvious involvement in fraud, possibly indicated that he was making a deal to turn in the owners as having known about the improper payments, or a deal to turn in the other directors as having directed all his actions.

Any qualified minds care to comment on this (10 min ago):

seriously ... two no-lose bets. romney will NOT beat obama, and Stars deal can't happen w/o Isai in prison, thus it can't happen. book em --Pokerati (@Pokerati)

Well, every time I listen to Pokerati Dan on Donkdown radio, he tries way too hard to hear himself think and always says a bunch of ridiculous **** that defies logic but makes him feel smart and informed. So, take that for what it's worth.

Good example of why I got rid of him from my twitter feed.

Government Files Motion to Deny Bail for Bitar, Conditions Satisfied but Bail Stayed

If Bitar does have ~$24m stashed overseas what are the chance this money can be returned to FTP coffers? It's definitely not an insignificant proportion of the player debt...