Sorry if this has been posted but there is so much going on today... Did we ever hear what happened/was decided at the hearing?

AGCC booked room for 3rd day - before this ****storm developed - expect licence termination tomorrow with AGCC comment

hearing doesn't matter bro....government just basically stated that fulltilt doesn't have any money..that all the numbers in our accounts were just made up...that there is no real dollars to back up the digitial ones...hud tilt.

JD

Does this kill online poker forever? Even if we get it legalized it feels like this has completely tarnished online poker as an industry. The fish will be unlikely to deposit money because of fear of this crap happening to them.

Now every time they get sucked out on they will think the DOJ is after them. Are we totally screwed!?

What a bombshell to wake up to but its not surprising or at least not to me as it had to come.

Stolen money is stolen money and you are not allowed to keep it once you know it is stolen.

This could and should be both good and bad news for players.

How much better for all those FTP owners and management if they did the right thing in the first place straight after April 15 and came clean and said we havent got the money but are going to give up our own dividend money to make sure that players get some money back.

However being the *******s that they are they decided to do and say nothing and now we have a scenario where they are forced to deal with The DoJ from a much weakened position which is almost indefensible but maybe they have a small chance of being found innocent.

If the DoJ wins all players funds are royally screwed but on the plus side it will force the owners to seriously consider giving up money they got that they now know without any shadow of a doubt know righfully belongs to the players.

This has to put immense pressure on all those that received benefits to give up significant amounts so that the players can get some of their money back.

How much better this would all have been if they gave up money earlier on by doing the right thing...they may have kept some money for themsleves and kept their integrity and honour but now may find themselves bankrupted and do jail time too.

It always pays to do the right thing but like their poor business judgement tthe post BF atitude is now looking like an even poorer decision by them.

Hopefully now justice is going to be seen to be done and those responsible going to be made to pay with any luck.

Also nice to see more information come out from The DoJ in one go than anything else we have had to date from all of those meaningless and nothing official statements and support those assrrtions made by many who have posted ITT.

A lot of your opinions have seemingly been vindicated, H, and I can well believe that Howie is now feeling genuinely depressed!

For those who want to read durr's Q&A but not schlep through the open NVG thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...t-ftp-1101709/

Still NO indictments. Good luck to the DoJ in getting anything out ot Lederer and Ferguson after putting them on notice for 5 months so they could hide assets, make them disappear, or transfer to places out of the DoJ's jusrisdiction.

Why haven't they been charged with any crimes yet ?

Nothing to do with vindication (I was out by 10% on dividend payments when making ti a round 500 million) but the point is I am now much more optimistoic about players getting some money back.

A while back I heard that the DoJ were thinking of making a public demonstration of their disatisfaction by arresting high profile FTP owners in Vegas and locking them up for a weekend before releasing them on bail.

I seriosuly doubted it at the time and did not reproduce it here but did mention it to one or two people privately.

This amendment is much more powerful as it will invariably make all those who benefited from FTP seriously question how safe they are from the DoJ and really pressurize them into making voluntary refunds to a player escrow repayment fund

If I were them I would be calling an emergency meeting right now to pool as much money as they could into a specifically opened up account for player refunds. It might just save them from future prosecution and possible jail despite them not currently being anmed in the same way as HL and CF and RF.

Be patient...they have accused them of Civil Money Laundering.....this may be leverage or the criminal complaint may be coming, we are told it is not unusual for the DOJ to file civilly and then later file the criminal. RICO seems to fit this whole thing and then they could target all the money paid out, but its not clear they are willing to use that hammer here....we will see.

Anyone want to post a line on the AGCC revoking FTPs license when the meeting ends? We posted 50-50 before this news....I am now at 80-20 they will revoke.

Out of interest, has there been any news from the AGCC hearing today?

I don t think its matters any more. Fulltilt is finished

This, they need to dig deeper\faster and find the people behind the scheme. Then apprehend ASAP. Just read a book on Bernie Madoff, kind of fitting. Greed at its finest. Rob Peter to pay Paul. I sincerely hope those involved get prison time. Go share a cell with Bernie crooks!

So it would seem, still would like to hear from the AGCC. Pretty sure the latest events at the DoJ would make Full Tilt's position as licensee untenable.

Want to hear what they have to say because I believe they have some culpability in all this.

so i guess as is nvg standard there's no obvious cliffs post on today's info anywhere other than something at the bottom of the op that has a link to something saying lederer's defrauded us. fantastic job guys

Concerning the last piece of the puzzle - how much money did the DOJ get from FTP?

So, if you all read the DOJ complaint clearly you will note that it states that as of the end of March 2011 FTP had only about $60M in player cash and we now also know that player cash and operating cash were the same to FTP. Now it was widely reported that FTP had over $150M in assets seized on theses boards on BF and in FTPs statement they said it was $115M but was vague to the point if that included all seizures and theft or just BF.

Based on the information in this complaint, how could the DOJ have seized more then $60m after April 15th?

Think about that folks...

you guys are just leveling in saying it's a ponzi scheme, right? you realize they didn't rob peter to pay paul, right?

they just robbed peter. They've collected enough deposits over the history of the company to cover all current player debt and then some. but they pocketed the money and tried to blame other people. Even with all of the stuff that went down before and around black friday they could have covered player deposits if they weren't paying themselves giant dividends, giving their pros ridiculous loans, crediting deposits they never received, and spending money for unnecessary advertisements. This was a legitimate business just like pokerstars, and the owners could have profited and still paid back players after BF just like pokerstars did.

however they let greed and short-sightedness take over and now after years of balling out they'll probably lose everything and end up in jail. and never be welcome in the poker or gambling world again.

It isn't a ponzi scheme. It was theft. They simply stole money from a business that they had no right to take. Simply because they could.

I'm pissed at them, as much as all of the people throwing the term ponzi around. But it wasn't one and I'm sick of people and news outlets using the wrong terminology and acting like we as players were investing our money and expecting some return because FTP promised us one. We simply put money on to play a game of poker with no guarantee of return, and they just robbed the bank.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...398633386.html


excerpt:


According to the latest filing from the Justice Department, Full Tilt Poker had just $60 million in the bank just before the April
crackdown occurred, while it owed $390 million to players around the world.

Yet the company had been distributing around $10 million a month to its owners, the government alleges. Those payments stopped in April, according to the government.

The company had continued to issue public statements that told players their funds were safe. Following the indictments of its executives in April, the company said in a statement, "Full Tilt Poker would like to assure all players that their funds remain safe and secure."

In June, Mr. Lederer reported to others at the company that there was only $6 million left, the government alleges.

Not wanting to be seen as totally vindictive I would like to propose the following fund for all FTP owners and management that are likely to face jail time if they still refuse to do the right thing.

So how about it? Who's prepared to donate to the :

"I'm an FTP owner in need of some vaseline fund"

I'll kick it off with $10

Anyone else want to chip in?

And I am quite prepared to hold onto the money on their behalf only taking out enough for the odd lobster lunch for me and a few mates.

BTW if anyone sees any FTP owner in any tournament please give them a jar of lubricant/vasceline from me and I will deposit money to a charity or into an online poker account for you.

I want them to know they could be next on the list for the DoJ

+1

No, it wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but we are sure the DOJ loves the press sounding of that. And, while they did rob peter to pay paul at later points, they also took money out of the business that belonged to the players which if they hadn't taken they wouldn't have needed to rob peter to pay paul. The dividends were always the problem and if they had theft, if they had money credited that they couldn't get from other players, then the questions we have constantly asked is how they could have paid themselves dividends and right to the bitter end when they had $60M in cash vs $390M in player funds owed?

We have been harping on this point for a long time. Finally, everyone gets it, but it was obvious all along, you just needed to connect the dots. The basics of everything in the DOJs complaint can be found on these boards - people opinionated, but many didn't want to listen, because they wanted to believe in these player owners. White collar crime is insidious, it is usually fueled by greed and it insnares so many, and this includes people who never intended to commit a crime, but over time they just stopped seeing the lack of morality in what they were doing. We concede that HL, CF or RF are probably not all bad people, but its clear their moral compas went astray and this happens so often in white collar crime. Of course, it's just accusations now - no one has been convicted yet - and the DOJ is just suing civilly, but if the statements are correct all of you can see the obvious.

Now we wonder how all those people who believed in the FTP owners, who claimed how honorable they were and who said how great their integrity was feel now? We suppose you will say, innocent until proven guilty.....but read the complaint, read the emails, re-read FTPs statement and ask yourself why were they paying themselves dividends when cash was depleting?

My thoughts on reading this are that while it greatly reduces the chances of us getting back 100% of our money, apparently that was unlikely to happen anyways.

Unless I'm mistaken however, this is the first time that the DOJ has characterized the players as victims so wouldn't this lead to a much better chance of players at least getting some amount of money back?

And I guess the question is, if the DOJ believes that the players are victims, then will it allow the money that is clawed back from the owners to be paid to the FTP players (THE VICTIMS)?

I believe they will based on the statements they issued. They may even give back the money they seized. So don't assume your FTP balance is totally worthless yet.

Good post, clearly the DOJ didn't get anywhere near what was claimed or suspected by people.

As previosuly mentioned I genuinely believe that the players ahev a much improved chance of getting some of their money back now. Not sure how much but it should be something which is always better than nothing.

However this whole disaster makes me want to cry as there were several opportunities for this to have been avoided both pre and post BF and all that has happened since is for the player fund shortfall to increase with payments going to lawyers and staff that were still employed but couldnt be utilized.

Yea thanks, that was my first impression in that the likelihood of us seeing 100% just went to almost 0, but the likelihood of seeing a number of around 50%ish (pulled out of my ass), seems a lot more likely.

With that said, I like the more optimistic bipolar side of you better harry