Steps 2 is certainly in the process of happening. I would guess 3 and 4 are being worked on as well.

Lol, so how many pages we done today and we back to the same thing, do not know anything new and do not know when we will...Seems like groundhog day every day here.

Thanks Bizzle and DF, amazing work.

On a lighter note, maybe Mr. Ivey and Mr. Lederer and all the other owners can learn something from this couple.



SAO PAULO—A homeless Brazilian couple that lives under the bridges of Sao Paulo found a garbage bag filled with 20,000 reals ($10,000) on a sidewalk Monday — and promptly turned it into the police.

Officials said the pair was out for a dawn stroll when they heard an alarm.

They walked closer to see what was going on and stumbled on a briefcase and a garbage bag full of money. The pair alerted a nearby security guard, asking him to call the police.

“When we arrived, the couple gave us the money. It might be the money stolen last week from a Japanese restaurant,” said military police spokesman Bruno dos Santos.

The homeless pair “had the opportunity to flee with the money, but they called a security guard and asked him to call the military police. What they did is commendable,” the spokesman said.

Jesus Silva Santos, the man who found the money, told the press that he earned a little more than $7 a day from recycling trash.

“My mother taught me never to steal,” he said.

Well, I would pry have to say its one of those things if youve never had it and got by without it, I guess why would you need it now? When you have a ton of money, its like a drug you always want more....

That's what I've been saying for months.

You can get clues, but often, what people think is a clue, isn't a clue.

The email from Bitar stating PS is paying salaries this month for the remaining PK employees is a clue. A court deadline is not generally a clue to anything other than an event involving the court. The court does not need to approve the settlement and related transactions in the civil matter.

Oversimplification, FTL.

We know that all the civil defendants are attempting to get the case thrown out of court. We know DOJ is attempting to get certain claimants' actions thrown out of court.

If you go through a day of your life and don't know any more than you knew the day before, you've wasted your day.

had to quote this, think ppl need to read more DF and post less IMHO

I dunno. Can you see any pattern here?

I've left out of the series posts where no qualitative judgment of the prospects is stated.

FYP including myself :-p

People like this don't exist in the poker world -there are many examples of the opposite. I don't know how Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon etc... think that they are entitled to keep the money they stole from us.

Bitar released on bail and hopefully gets 145 years max sentance, but what's next?

Old Bene Gesserit saying "The less we know, the longer the explanation"

i picked up on that too.


deal is dead guys.

gg

Poker fuse just ran with this on twitter.

I doubt that making sure that a bunch of gamblers are paid back have ever been one of the top priorities for the DOJ in this case. I mean, they agreed to negotiate and they will be ok with that as long as it fits with their own interests. That's a truism, I know, but it's good to remember it because no one can expect that the DOJ will make big sacrifices just to see that the players recover their money. I don't know, but it seems now that PS are more interested in a deal than the DOJ.
BTW, I still can't believe the GBT deal was rejected when it appeared to be almost finalized without having a more solid agreement between the DOJ/PS/FTP. Yeah, the conditions of paying back players sucked and they were time consuming, but now we don't have a ****. IMO, the money is almost gone and the best we can expect now is pennies on the dollar if The DOJ decides to compensate us as 'victims of a fraud'.

Could it be that the deal was practically done when Ray steppped on that plane
and that he had some sort of a verbal agreement how the DOJ would treat him
and now, that there are new charges against Ray and they made it difficult for him to make bail,
Isai Scheinberg is saying to the DOJ "what guarantees do I have that you will stick to your word?"

Here's my 2 cents on where things probably are, this is speculation:

FTP and DOJ have entered into an agreement the essential terms of which call for FTP to forfeit its assets in return for DOJ dismissing the civil charges against FTP and assuming liability for repayment of the FTP players.

PS and DOJ have entered into an agreement, subject to certain conditions precedent, the essential terms of which call for PS to purchase some or all of the FTP assets in return for DOJ dismissing the civil charges against PS. Pursuant to the agreement, either PS or DOJ will be responsible for the repayment of the FTP players. Some of the purchase price may be described as a fine.

One of the conditions precedent in the PS/DOJ agreement will call for DOJ to deliver the former FTP assets with good title, free and clear of all claims of others. In order to do that DOJ has to eliminate the claims of three classes of persons: (1) FTP, the owner, (2) Persons who have filed claims in the forfeiture action and (3) the rest of the world, i.e. unknown persons who might have a claim against the assets.
These impairments to title are disposed of as:
(1) FTP is easy, they have agreed to waive their rights and claims and maybe have already signed documents that are in escrow.

(3) The rest of the world, this was accomplished by the actions verified in Declaration of Publication filed on, or about, July 3, 2012. It is interesting that DOJ waited so long into the action to perfect notice on the rest of the world, it looks like someone thought filing the action was sufficient notice or that this slipped through the cracks but was caught during negotiations and due diligence.

(2) Persons who have filed claims; the first attempt to get rid of these claimants is by the recently filed MTD's. If these motions are granted these claimants have 30 days to appeal the decision (because the US is a party to the case, it has 60 days to appeal but presumably would waive its appeal rights). If the MTD's aren't granted then these claims could be settled by negotiation, litigation or the assets could be taken subject to these claims. Based on earlier decisions in this case, I think there is a high likelihood that these claims will be dismissed. Assuming they are dismissed, after waiting the appeal time and ironing out any last minute problems, of which there will certainly be some:

PS and DOJ implement their agreement and simultaneously file a voluntary stipulation of dismissal with prejudice with regard to the civil case. During all this the criminal case has been arranged but everyone will deny it.

There it is. http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-re...-civil-claims/

Did you get to play the organ? If so, what did you play?

^Progress is good.

Hehe ... call me untrusting, but sign over the assets, give us our money, ... THEN we'll talk about dropping or not dropping charges.

Diamond, 2 questions because trying to read this thread to get this information makes my head hurt:

1) Are you still cautiously optimistic?
2) Has anything significantly changed from the process steadily progressing toward final completion (obv without guarantee that it actually reaches that until it is actually completed)?

FWIW a person I know that was in touch with an FTP lawyer outlined further steps beyond hasing out the details of a deal during the final weeks of the GBT deal. Those steps were basically what DF, bizzle, and gioco are saying is likely happening right now. So that can't be a bad thing. Obviously nothing is certain, but I think tamiller did a great job of summing things up last night when said that at least things are moving forward even if it is slower than players might have liked.

I'm obviously no legal expert, but if some of you guys would just read more and post less "cliffs?' or "is it over?" or "when will they issue a press release?" I think we'd all enjoy the thread a little more. FWIW I understand DF's frustration but the valuable information to noise ratio has gone up dramatically in recent days. It's actually easy to get some really solid insight into what is happening (even if it is just another step in a long process that we are uncertain of the outcome). Whereas a recently as a week ago the thread was mostly bickering and youtube posts.

although it's helpful if people don't start the "was FTP profitable?" debate which is honestly one of the stupidest arguments based purely on semantics that I have ever seen on 2p2. (Whether or not they were profitable in different forms of accounting I don't know, but I do know they embezzled and paid out in salaries and marketing way more money than it would have taken to pay back players. So the money should have been there + more for themselves if they weren't such greedy bastards. there I ended that argument.)