You should go stop by and say hi. Pocket Kings site still http://pocketkings.ie/

He's on a mission--he's breaking us all down and building us back up again.

Keep in mind that anyone involved with the processing side was well aware that they were going to violate the UIEGA statutes. Not many legitimate business people willingly violate laws. Therefore, you're left with people without scruples to deal with. Poker players in particular are notorious for not worrying about how the money was obtained by the other players. As recently as this year, the big game players were well aware that a major fish at the table was the Bellagio Bandit, but kept playing him without reporting anything to anyone.

The main reason why it is not realistic to have FTP back is, they make every day without opening their site a lot of more depts. Beside of the running costs like stuff, servers, licenses, legal fee´s, write downs for example, they also own 150$m to customers + 60$m in crediting funds.

And since June 29th they don´t make money, how much costs it to run a pokersite like FTP per day? Who in the hell is such stupid to buy this company?

True, and if they hadn't found this guy, they would have found someone else, no doubt.

But this guy's history make it clear that he wasn't just tempted by the easy money by "bending the rules" to help poor US poker players get their money online out of the goodness of his heart. He's a long time con artist.

Shady business going to associate with shady businessmen, I suppose.

From time to time they open the mails they've been getting and mass send the standard reply too, though.

No one is arguing anyone coming in will have to start with a new slate. FTP customer service and security were considered non-existant and corrupt in that order. People liked fulltilt because the software was good and games ran all the time. FTP does have value and if re-licsenced they can start right back up in Europe. It is a little surprising Stars isnt looking at acquiring them. They already have better people running departments and can just merge the clients and player pool. More like consolidate departments since clients would still be seperate

If I was a potential buyer of FTP I might try to set up an account to start buying Fulltilt $ at a discount to reduce what I had to pay on closing. Treating player accounts at 100% for the liabilities side of the ledger when negotiating the price while buying them up at 20% of face might be very profitable.

Correct. Anyone remember the PMI issue? It was as clear as day with that that FTP were passing USA customers bank details onto some extremely shady people/organisations, despite what their website said about that stuff being 100% safe and secure.

Absorb the following:

1) FTP is owned by U.S. Citizens through a series of shell corporations, Stars has a single majority owner.

2) FTP was a late comer to the poker arena and wasn't profitable until well-after UIGEA went into affect and a mass of U.S. players migrated to their site. Stars was profitable long before UIGEA because they were the ones who put Moneymaker on the map and created the poker BOOM.

3) FTP had affiliate/rakeback programs to draw players to their site (and the ****tiest in the industry at that) while Stars had NO rakeback/affiliate programs = less profit

4) FTP was being heavily advertised on U.S. cable and OTA programming flaunting U.S. lawmakers and prosecutors = less profit, litigation to ensue

5) FTP was very heavily aligned towards a U.S. playerbase (see #2) and once losing that market, they were still #2 because the net affect of UIGEA, but over time their traffic would diminish as players moved to more profitable sites (better rakeback, no pending litigation).

6) The DOJ was sending FTP notices to cease and desist from U.S. operations. FTP ignored it and knew the legal consequences, therefore they kept cashflow to a minimum

FTP's business model was capped and with no plausible revenue growth, it makes it a poor business investment. The withdrawal of these two poker sites from the U.S. market is negatively affecting OTHER sites who never serviced U.S. players. There's less money to travel throughout the poker economy.

The owners of FTP profited quicker and better by using this model gambling against the long-term forecast. Because when regulation ensues, FTP and Stars would no longer be the major players in the U.S. market anyway, the casinos would.


Those are the facts, wake up and smell the roses, and stop looking at everything so myopically

If Ifrah claims that FTP can not release certain figures due to confidentiality issues with the DOJ, who is the right person at the DOJ to email to confirm if this is/isn't true?

FTP had a deal set up on July 17th with an interested investor willing to cover American players balances. FTP declined the offer in hopes of holding off for a better deal, speculating that they would receive more money for their companies rights. Now that more events have come out, the interested investor is skeptical and Full Tilt is now trying to sell the company quickly for their best deal now. With no revenues coming into our company any more we are looking at new investors. It is either hold off until all funds are used up and we have to declare bankruptcy or find an investor and abandon ship.

You're probably not going to be able to obtain them without an insider leak. It's part of the DOJ case against FTP and a federal grand jury has already virtually declared them guilty as charged.

this is what i do not understand. arent we insiders? we have a big financial interest in the company. its about our money and time.

While out smoking a cigarette I thought of a great analogy that some less objective people here may be able to comprehend.

You see this beautiful girl and she's single. You hit it off right away and fall in love over the next few months. She moves in and over the year or two you realize wow, there's more to a relationship than just looks. This woman doesn't shower (common bipolar issue), can't keep a job, is always unhappy and seemingly nothing can satisfy her.

That's FTP in a nutshell. Great software, marketed by the best players in the world, and has the allure of the american dream, get rich quick. What you don't see is that the operation is illegal, the player funds have been embezzeled, the financial backing of the money on the site is void, meanwhile the the owners are keeping operating cash flow to a minimum and paying out monthly dividends to enrich their own lives.

It's called greed.

why only american players. and where is the source for it?

While player funds and reimbursement is a concern for the DOJ, that's an indirect effect of their primary objective: Shutdown a company operating illegally and targetting U.S. citizens. Recover what they think they are owed and leave the onus on FTP management/ownership to figure out the fallout.

It's not the DOJ's responsibility to pay out players with funds they confiscated, they have even more right to that money than we do. Where was the legal document you signed everytime you made a deposit that you were supposed to receive anything in return, or that the funds were guaranteed? Oops, our mistake.

thank you gradx, you seem to have some legal clue about all of this. i understand, at least a bit, that the doj`s top priority is clearly not the players funds as we are not top creditors.

i have posted this in the other thread but maybe you could post your comment to the following:

also, how does the doj calculate the fee of $1billion dollars. i dont wanna know the exact details but i would love to get some insight in this.
does the doj calculate FTP`s illegally obtained revenue in all the years that it operated illegally and multiplay with/add a penalty factor?

I'm not a legal mind but I look at things objectively so it tends to coincide with the law.

Player funds were co-mingled which basically means it was laundered into FTP's general operating funds and with no distinction, it's basically a free for all. We were screwed the minute the DOJ stepped in.

In terms of the $1B suit, it's probably involves legal fees, taxes, and fines and the has some multiplier towards how egregiously and the time period they were subverting the law. If it ever went to court the amount adjucated would probably be 1/2 to 2/3 of that amount, but my guess is it never will see a courtroom. It's just a large figure so that if the company wanted to settle and possibly have future opportunities at in the U.S. market, the DOJ would have the upper hand. And since FTP was ignoring the cease and desist and continuing to advertise it on TV, my guess is the prosecution team wanted to put them out of business...because they had the legal right to do so.

ty dr. love! FTP has everyone so wrapped up into this whole fiasco that we're seeing people make love analogies to this mess.

come on at least he is looking at things objectively unlike everyone else!

Source?

One more thing about the DOJ suit. Party settled for $100M and they left the U.S. market as soon as UIGEA was passed, so consider it fodder for speculating on what the DOJ will want for FTP who operated for 5 years post-UIGEA and had the audacity of blasting it all over american television, including PAD and other made for TV infomercials.

And one of the co-founder of partypoker Anurag Dik**** settled for 250 or 300m$ with the SDNY.

Apparently an entity who uses intimidation as a result of a stupid and at least vague law has more right to money that belongs to us the players. What else is new?