get outta here! phil ivey was making almost a million dollars a month from FTP? how much was FTP making a month then? How did these guys screw up so bad?!??!

Greed

ivey shoulda just grinded .1/.2 and banked the 900k a month.

I go w/ incredible incompetence. There obv wasn't a business man ala Scheinberg anywhere in sight.

Pretty fine line when that incompetence is lining your own pockets to the tune of millions a month.

Considering it might take the DoJ a couple of months to send checks, are you guys considering your FT balances part of your br once the deal finalizes and the petition is sent?

No 'fine line' at all. I will be kind and say that they were fools instead of crooks as much as that may anger/aggravate some itt. All they had to do was run the company properly again ala Stars and they would've still made a lot of money and not be where they are now. IMR, how hard could it be? 'We take money out of profits' instead of 'ZOMG! There's gabillions passing through our hands and it will last forever we can grab as much as we want and nothing will ever go wrong!'. When I was in business I was always prepared for the worst, these imbeciles weren't.

If DOJ pays in less than a year I will donate the entire amount (appx $800 or so) to the Red Cross. If less than 6 months, a half.

ETA: Hmmm. Somehow that doesn't seem that that reads right. To clarify I think it's going to be at least a year before DOJ pays out anything, maybe 6 months, certainly not a couple.

I won't consider it part of my BR until the cash is in my hand (when the check clears). I've learned a valuable lesson about a new wrinkle to BR MGMT; namely not keeping all your eggs in one basket and not counting your chickens before they're hatched. Now if I could just figure out if it's the chicken or the egg that came first...

It costs quite a bit but it's essentially results based marketing outsourcing. Affiliates only make money if they have players raking for them. FTP2 probably won't have a lot of money to splash about on marketing up front and so this makes a lot of sense.

That is a good point. I guess my thoughts leaned on returning players and when FTP reopens what percentage of existing players would need the markting to return? Well, I am assuming its a new company starting from scratch, wouldn't it be better in the short term for them to atleast try to attract returning players themselves?

I suspose if the new FTP keeps the existing Affiliates in place then yes, they should continue.

You can't honestly be serious.

(1) Indicted for bank fraud and deliberatly trying to by pass US laws on banking.

(2) According to the AGCC they falisfied accounts to hide the money stolen from the players.

(3) They continued paying huge dividends to owners while knowing they were in a financial hole.

(4) Post BF they continuously lied to the players when asked if their money was safe.

(5) In June they offered inducements and promotions for players to play and deposit knowing full well they didnt have the money to pay out and it was basically a ponzi type scheme at that time.

These are criminal behaviours not foolish ones.

Maybe the foolish part is thinking you might get away with these crimes.

Guys, I know that FTP ruined this NY for us...but anyway happy new year everyone! wish us all $$$ back in 2012

Unless some kind of screenshot was taken maybe, how could anyone prove their owed $ by ftp or d.o.j.? Or even proving there is $ owed in tourney tickets and points?

FTP should be forced to email out thorough account statements to every player affected imo, like now.

All I wanna say is this:

FTP BETTER HAVE ONE HELL OF A SOFTWARE UPDATE!

At some point they had to know that they wouldn't get away w/ it.

What you lay out above the last sentence, to me, is the behaviour of an organization that started w/ 1 mistake, that led to the 2nd mistake and so on and so on until they got into such a hole that there was no getting out and became frantic in their efforts to keep things running. I don't think that they initially started out w/ the intention to rob anybody. The proper thing to have done would have been to shut down as soon as it became clear that they needed to raid player funds to continue operations. But, more so than that, they should never have gotten into that position in the first place.

And that is why I really hope to get the full story someday. I want to know how they managed this although it seems fairly clear to me: Ray Bitar was running the show w/ board members who didn't know what in the world they were doing and Ray Bitar didn't know what in the world he was doing either.

Screen snap shots wouldn t be any good as they can be altered. When the time comes, its a matter of DOJ or FTP simply refunding the cash in your account. It would not be expected that you prove what you have.

I would expect that you will hve to prove who you are, photo id, a third party bill to prove your address and so on.

Yeah I'd like to know who knew what and when, more importantly who didn't have any idea what was going on

i have a few checks in hand that were requested prior to BF, arrived after BF, and were assumed worthless based on others experiences. I would call these checks physical proof, given the name on the check is/was affiliated with FTP.

I actually received a check that I cashed out in late march, on April 15th. It made for an ironic and salt-in-wound type of moment that, after being woken up by a friend to go read the news and see whats happened and spending all day as a nervous wreck that I go check my mail (at around 11pm) and theres a check that I couldn't cash. I suspected that it would not be "legit", so I had my bank look into the accounts and my bank told me the accounts listed on the check were closed. Numerous people told me I should have attempted to take it to a check cashing service but, I really didn't feel like adding check fraud or any sort of crime to my burdens (though I am not a lawyer it seems those crimes would have applied to me since I was already of the belief the check was no longer "good"). Anyway, I bring the check to the casino sometimes as I inevitably end up talking to people at tables about online poker and FTP, it serves as a great "prop" to show i'm not entirely delusional and have some truth to my tale.


On another topic, people keep asking where the money is going to come from to pay US players in particular, noting that $80 mil from GBT to the DOJ does not cover it. I was reading the pokernews article on the top 10 2011 poker stories (#2 being FTP's mess) and there was a link to an article I had forgotten about, wherein Chris Ferguson responds to civil charges and lays claim / ownership to many many millions of dollars in "accounts" relating to the companies associated with FTP.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2011/1...aint-11431.htm

Was just wondering if that money can be confirmed (by the greater minds among us) to actually exist, and if so, would that money be transferred to the DOJ with the pending "transfer of assets" in the works? Or would that money be transferred to GBT? And more importantly and perhaps this is an eye opener...

if that money actually exists, and was belonging to the companies associated with FTP, is it possible that money really was intended to pay us back and that somehow legal actions / financial actions by governments and banking institutions fudged up the process? Hate to sound naive and assume after all this time that our money really was "Safe and Secure", its just I haven't read that article in a while and it slipped my mind that there is claim that such large amounts ($98,276,540 and $196,553,080 are mentioned, though i'm not sure if the 98M is part of the 196M or if the 60M we know they had "on hand" is part of either #, imagine if they were all seperate and FTP shell companies had 360M?) existed and were in the ownership of companies associated with FTP.

Does that money exist? What will become of it if the deal with GBT goes through? What -would- have become of it if the FTP cookie had not crumbled the way it did?

These people absolutely have the money. They were dishing out 10m a month in dividends for years. How much where the owners paid for endorsements? 1m a month? 5m? Then 100% rb. Then $35/hour for every hour they played. Then buy-ins to 10k tourneys and every FTSOP. Then "ship me 500k. I'm good for it," and never repaying. That is why these people are absolute scum. They could have fixed this 4/16. We're sitting here 7.5 months later. Disgusting.

GBT is even shipping them 230m, and they still won't make up the difference. That's what? 15-20% of their "profit" here. There are literally no words to describe the amount of terrible things I hope befall these people.

On the basis we're almost 'definitely' due some news this month. Can DF or any1 smart maybe geuss/confirm when we should expect it. My geuss would be something in the 1st 10/15 days of the month.

On another note, why has the month Febuary been chucked about a lot for a possible relaunch date?

Soon would be a brilliant time for ftp to come back so here's to hoping.

Happy new yr all and GL

That was a interesting link. It looks like Chris Ferguson is laying claim to his share of the dividends that were issued. I seem to recall from earlier posts, that while other shareholders withdrew their dividends, Chris Ferguson didn't.
I wonder how all this will work?

This is where your "foolish" argument breaks down.

They committed numerous criminal acts that took much thought and pre-planning on multiples levels.

Many meetings with multiple people to organize such complex defrauding schemes.

These were deliberate acts by people who are by most accounts higher than average intelligence.

From reports from the DOJ, Howard sent out emails early outlining the bad financial state FTP was in.

To claim he didnt know and its all down to Bitar is laughable.

Jesus also had to have known the financials as one of the biggest owners.

I think numerous other people knew also but were quite happy getting paid.

I dont think any reasonable person is claiming FTP started out as a Ponzi scheme.

Im sure Enron started out with good intentions also

Thats doesnt mean their actions didnt turn into dishonest and criminals ones.

If you look at the five actions I outlined.

Just think of the pre-planning/meetings and approval needed at various levels for each of those things to take place.

The AGCC alone has claimed FTP had been defrauding them with crooked accounting a long time before BF. (while they were still paying the owners dividends)
Hopefully that will come out in the independant report being conducted.

Im guessing the actions will be proven to be premeditated and criminal rather than naive.

So, after being reminded of the article where Chris Ferguson lays claim to such vast amounts of money, i'm still looking forward to people who are more informed than I to confirm if such money actually exists. Can someone address this? Its possible this issue has already been discussed in-depth and if so I apologize for bringing it up again, and would gladly accept a link to another thread or article that discusses those amounts and whether they are real or not.

why would he lay claim to money that does not exist