You realize they were raking about 6-7 million a day and Pokerstars was raking about 10 million a day?

There is a BOATLOAD Of money missing.

I understand the shareholders of FTP can't publicly blast good ole Ray but my guess is they all think he stole a fortune and blamed on the "shortfall' but can't say anything because he knows all their secrets, bank account #s and what ever.

Anyone that believes that shortfall nonsense is pretty damn naive. I'm sure the shortfall happened, and I'm sure the # is a lot smaller than they claim and I am sure it is awfully convenient for the boys at the top of FTP to blame it on this. Great camouflage for larceny, in my opinion of course.

Raking 6 to 7 million a day? I dont think so. Maybe a million.

Whoa there cowboy... that's crazy talk.

Rake is gross profit, not net profit. Deposit and withdrawal fees end up costing a solid third of rake or so all by themselves for US customers. Affiliates and rakeback cost 35% (lowered to 30% at some point) of rake for affiliated players. Running the ireland office cost like $175M/year. Plus FTP spent a boatload on advertising and pros etc.

They also were not raking $6M/day. That's not even close.

You think it's convenient for them to blame the failure on the company on an extremely extremely stupid decision that they made? They're not exactly hiding the fact that they kept taking money out of the company either...

Who said anything about letting off the current owners and management???

Thise liabilities will remain with those current owners and management until such time as the US players were paid in full.

I would guess that the New Owner/Investor may make some promise with or without a guarantee to repay US players but that they (US Players) will have to wait as they have no immediate worth to the new owner(s)

Furthermore I have little doubt that as they will have to wait they should also be entitled to comensation of interest for example at commercial rates.

I am not sure how many people realize this. I don't. I realize that somebody who might know something said that on one particular day, FTP once raked more than $1M. So our respective realizations only disagree by about one decimal order of magnitude.

You got any sources for this realization?

You keep saying this as though somebody can buy Full Tilt Poker without repaying US players. They can't. The DOJ has to sign off on any deal, and there's no way that they're taking a promise of repayment at a later date.

Guys, I'm obviously not happy about any of this, but at this point I believe exactly what Noah is saying is what happened:

At some point in time maybe $10M was a reasonable amount of distributions for a month(perhaps only a single month in the entire history of the company). Instead of scaling distributions to insure the longevity of the company and best interest of players FTP continued to pump out $10M a month.

I would have to guess that once any deal was done it would be shouted from the rooftops.

My best guess would be this is a false alarm.

They need to agree a lot of things with a lot of people and doubt a deal could have been completed in four weeks form start to finish.

I heard a rumor that the investor decided to give back every former FTP player $1 million each for their troubles. #justarumordontforget

Please stop with the jokes. This is not a joking matter. I hope i wake up tomorrow to headlines such as "ftp has been sold"

Wanna bet?

I heard a rumor FTP are a bunch of ****ing knobjockeys.
Oh wait......
#notjustarumordontforget

Noah, I admire all the reporting you have done. In some posts you make I sometimes cannot tell whether you are reporting facts or are telling us your conclusions.

You have repeatedly made claims about what the DoJ is and isn't prepared to do. Care to cite some sources? If not, how about at least give us some specific unsourced statements?

If not, could you at least distinguish between what you have been told, what conclusions you have come to on your own based on what you have been told, and what conclusions you have come to based on the exercise ofyour common sense?

Start with "there's no way [the DoJ] are taking a promise of repayment at a later date". Then touch on the DoJ's desire and intent to pay players back with forfeited money and/or their intent to wring payment to players out of any settlement that is reached.

I don't think it's convenient, I KNOW it's convenient for Ray to blame it on this - perfect camouflage for larceny.

Anyone that thinks they were raking less than 3-4 million a day is pretty naive.

They would make 100k+ in rake from ONE rush poker tournament.

Ask around if you don't believe that rake figure. It happens to be the truth. The Pokerstars number might of been closer to 10 or 11 a day. The amount of money missing is staggering. Some heavy duty stealing going on before the shareholders ever saw a penny in my opinion and the opinion of others I have talked to.

I honestly believe it is impossible for anyone to buy FTP under the condition of having to pay back all the player funds now

The solution must therefore lie with something along the lines of RoW players have their deposits in an accounn somewhere and readily available to them and the site reopens and services them whilst the US player funds and DoJ have to wait for theirs.

Why shouldnt something along those lines be agreed by all concerned parties?

Call it a promise with some kind of guarantee or whatver but the way I look at things from the outside is to conclude that nobody wants FTP as it currently stands in the way that it is currently being offered.

I have never said and do not expect any deal to be reached that allows US players not to be repaid (you seem to be extrapolating something from words I have used and turned them into comments I have not made) just that I canot see any investor wanting those US liabilities and that this is the reason that nobody has yet bought FTP. However someone may buy FTP if they are allowed to take the company over with an agreement to defer payments to the US contingent as that might juts swing things in favour of a deal being done.

This insistance that everyone everywhere in the world should be able to get their money back in full at the point of reopening is causing such a huge hurdle that no possible deal has yet been reached by any potential investors so something has to be done to think of a solution that differs from this "All the player funds now or nothing at all" attitude as that isnt and hasnt worked.

the thing is, I appreciate him sharing what info he has, but he has to realize how sensitive we all are to this stuff. You can't just tweet something like that if it's thin. I just hope he didn't do that, cause that would suck.

No chance US players get paid back at first, if ever. There is ZERO incentive to pay them.

Answer from adam when I asked for details.

I specifically said twice in the tweet it's a rumor. Take it for what you will just thought i would pass it on@joeyrulesall
Twitter for iPad • 9/26/11 11:57 PM

I follow this thread not too closely, so I don't know what kind of discussion this has generated, but I just realized that FTP issued a statement to pokerstrategy basically saying that they are not a ponzi scheme.

Can we back up a bit and marvel at the glorious incompetence displayed here? I mean it's truly gob smacking. Basically, DOJ made them global headlines for them 3 days ago, completely ****ting on their reputation, tarnishing their already tarnished brand and instead of being on top of it and getting their side of their story correcting at the very least the most obvious fallacy -which is that they re not a ponzi scheme- they sit on their asses only to release a press release that a person is required to literally search actively to find.

I mean I know Iffrah is a distrusted figure, but he of all, a lawyer, possesses the elemental touch to answer basic questions and make an effort to communicate with people. And that most basic thing makes him shine head and shoulders above everyone else. Which leads to the other staggering fact: On the one hand FTP is competent enough to have built itself as the second most successful poker site with competitive software and a brilliant marketing campaign and on the other hand they have the PR savvy and asshatic customer service of a corner shop grocer in the mountainous regions of Zimbabwe.* It's like they suffer from corporate asperger's. That's quite the feat.

* No offense to the corner shop grocers of Zimbabwe.

A question...

If no deal is done and FTP go broke cant the assets (software and RoW database) be sold off and someone launch a new online poker site and not pay any RoW or US players at all and have zero of the liabilities with any proceeds going to The DoJ?

If this is the case then shouldnt the DoJ and everyone else look for alternate solutions?

Classic

That's impossible, they haven't meet the DOJ yet...

Whilst its not exactly a Ponzi scheme it is a ponzi type scheme in that they used player funds/deposits instead of shareholder investment funds.

As for FTP claiming it isnt a ponzi scheme who cares what they call it as they have basically stolen player funds and its the result that counts and not the mechanism by which that result came about except that they did it illegally/imorally/unethically or however you want to describe it.

Their statements have also been littered with lies such as "All player money is safe and secure"

As such take ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING that FTP and their representatives have to say with a large bucket of salt as they are clearlty liars and totally untrustworthy.

Judge them by their actions and not what they say as actions speak louder than words.

They have lied

They have stolen

They have lots of player money in their personal bank accounts.

Until they make a public statement along the lines of: "We have the player money in our personal accounts to stop the DoJ getting it" and follow that up with the actual return of the stolen player money dont heed anything they have to say.