think you need to read rest of thread, you can have FTP for $0 if you have $300m to put in an account......mind you, you already owe players $300m and the DoJ a potential $1bn. Got a few legal costs to cover too - still interested? There might be 6 months wages for the 600 staff to get you going?

Come on they are giving it away with conditions, you can have it if you pay up 300 megas or whatever, if they just wanted to give it away there would be a long line of takers.

Sometimes, SP chooses not to publish things specifically because we don't have a nice clear interpretation of them and we think that we'll be able to do a better job if we hold off.

For example, the shortfall was in the public domain since Bradley Franzen's plea agreement on May 23rd. We had no ****ing clue what it meant at the time (mostly because the correct and only explanation just seemed completely absurd), and we just couldn't put it into context at all--Did this mean FTP had lost $60M by doing something really stupid? (They actually lost at least $119M.) Was this totally standard practice? (Nope.) Did FTP do this intentionally like the DOJ press release seemed to imply? (Yep.) Was this as big a deal as it seemed? (Yep.) If so, why was it buried at the bottom of a press release? (Don't know.) It seemed that not many other people had noticed this part of the press release from the DOJ, and we thought that we had the ability to figure this stuff out, so we just starting asking everyone we could "WTF is this $60M shortfall thing?" A few weeks later, we published an extremely detailed article.

In other cases, we simply publish stuff without much interpretation. I mean.. I'm not going to figure out someone's motives. It's unlikely that anyone will tell me on the record why Ifrah did this, and even if someone did, I'd have absolutely no way to discern whether or not he was lying. So, I basically have four choices:

1) Simply publish what happened with some context, as we did.
2) Speculate about someone else's motives in an article.
3) Tag it on to some other article as an aside.
4) Not publish it at all.

I didn't really consider option two at all of course. What do you guys think?

First I heard of that thanks!

#1 or your sources dry up

edit: maybe a bit of #2 if it's cleared labelled as speculative

+1 for TT's statement below

In a very short period of time, S:P has established itself as one of the few credible news sources in the poker world. They've done a lot of digging and come up with a lot of information that no one else made the effort to uncover. I think they're doing a great job.

Option 1 obviously, when in doubt always publish imo . It's just irritating that it feels like it could either be super impactful (positive or negative) or not impactful at all and we don't have the knowledge to make any kind of judgement on which it is.

But I guess that is pretty standard when it comes to news surrounding FTP .

The article was fine, Noah. You explained the facts without interpreting them for us, and I think knowing that Mr. Ifrah asked to withdraw from the case is pretty relevant.

What does it mean, though? IDK, but if the law firm representing them wants out because of the financial burden, I can't think that's a very good sign. I think they probably know that the amount of work they would have to put into the defense is more than FTP can afford to pay, and quite possibly a substantial amount more.

I think FTP is pretty close to completely without cash at this point, but that's just my opinion.

where's this at?

Moving to withdraw does not imply that the client doesn't have the money. What is pretty obvious if you actually read the statement is that he suggests that the case was under/mis-represented to him when he took it. Now further facts have been presented to him he feels he can't fulfil his obligations without detriment to the long term health of his firm.

Example - he might need to hire ten new secretaries and ten extra para-legals plus rent twenty new photocopiers. He can't justify this for the sake of a single case. Therefore he asks for leave to remove himself. If the move simply implied that his client has no money to pay him he would not do this as it would seriously prejudice his clients future prospects of retaining alternative counsel.

Thankfully courts are generally presided over by people smarter than your average NVG'er - who tend not to jump to, "Well I'm not sure and have no basis other than a gut instinct to say so but they be busto.." type conclusions.

Wow, no offense to you, but you are naive of you think that FTP was solvent prior to BF. Did you not read their statement? They practically admitted that they were insolvent. I would agree, we dont have proof, but the wide ranging view based on the public evidence is that they were insolvent.

I agree IoM is the best of the worst if you want to put it that way

Because they could pay doesn't mean that IoM regulation worked - I didn't mean that. A necessary condition of claiming they failed is surely a case where players got stiffed else it's theoretical.

There was and still is alot of legal difference regarding the playing of poker in the US. The situation of UIGEA tacked onto the SAFE port Act and badly drafted really threw a spanner into the works. The DoJ could have shutdown the websites and made a warning notice saying don't play we consider it illegal like they did on BF and then if the sites continued repeated the BF actions later as they did and can say we gave you sites & players fair warning but they didn't.

Don't forget the US Govt. naturally had legal advisors that gave legal advice that they would prevail in the WTO court ruling concerning provision of Internet Gambling under GATS. We all know how that turned out so just because a lawyer or an Attorney General says so doesn't make it law (thats for the elected Govt. to decide) it's his interpretation of it till contested in Court(s) i.e. precedent. As I understand it.

As my friend jokes, barristers/lawyers as a total entity have a net success of zero so why employ them

I guess you are referring to me, as I penned the latest article. All I can tell you is that it was a news piece, not Op-Ed. There is a time and place for both.

The news simply is that one of FTP's lawyers has asked permission to be relieved, in only the class action suit.. I gave you his exact words to the court.
In this particular action. Mr. Ifrah represents more than 10 defendants, and to be frank, it's not like going into municipal court for a speeding ticket.
He has been counsel for FTP et al for a number of other cases, and I never said he was ending their relationship or anything like that. AFAIK, he continues be one of the counsel in other actions pending.

Without telling you more than you want to know, if you click on the word "motion" in my piece, you will find his exact motion to the court. It clealy spells out the additional work he would be facing now, based on actions taken by the Plaintiffs. He also clearly refers to privileged information from his client.

There isn't much more to be added at this time. You can't expect him to risk everything and violate privilege to post on a poker forum. I don't.

Option 1 and 2 if you feel like it.

I claim that D_F didn't write that article - far too short, no footnotes and not enough detail - must be an imposter

Seriously separating facts from opinion whilst trying to provide a short and concise preci sis what makes a good journalist imho whilst hooking the readers with some interesting tidbits LDO.

Pretty sure his organisation had Lederer/Ferguson on it's board of directors prior to Black Friday. You cannot expect an unbiased viewpoint from this person.

I appreciate your debat [sic] isn't about FTP, its [sic] about IOM allowing pokerstars to operate while they were almost surely committing Bank Fraud.

So we're moving from "anyone here can see they were committing fraud" to "almost surely they were committing fraud". It's a start I suppose.

Two points - first, here's a bunch of free apostrophes [''''''] - feel free to use 'em when contracting "it is" to "it's".

Secondly, will you kindly point out the court case that agrees with your statement that Stars/Tilt/AP etc committed bank fraud? If not, all you have is sophistry and that's lazy in a way that Noah and Skallagrim aren't.

Btw who are you quoting when you say "we" - is Mrs Ledason there too or were you elected to speak on our behalf when we weren't looking?

From the article: "Full Tilt Poker attorney in the pending class action lawsuit, Jeff Ifrah, has asked the court for permission to step down, citing “an unreasonable financial burden on the law firm.”"

Your interpretation is also possible. I stated my opinion was an opinion, not a fact. You are certainly free to disagree with it, but implying that I'm not intelligent enough to read the article is a little out of line, IMO.

Well I for one never thought of the 10 new secs and 10 new paralegals and 20 new copiers as a reason he might cite potential financial hardships as his reason for withdrawl from the suits. I'm just another dumbass who thought it might be FTPs lack of money to cover long time fees. What was I thinking?Thanks for the heads up on this

Your reading is perfect.

This means "If we win, we don't know if we'll get paid, and if we lose, we don't know we'll get paid. So f*ck this noise, I'm outski."

Didn't read the actual motion yet (I've been conditionned to not click links in news articles since it's always just ads or crap behind the link ), read it now though, thanks for mentioning it.
First of all, I didn't want to criticise you or anything, I just responded to SGT RJs post with the opinion that it was very understandable people were seeking for more info since we are left guessing what the article actually means. I feel like by reading your post I already have a somewhat better grasp of it so thanks for that.

Not true in IOM;
- Servers in IOM
- Funds in Trust or Account executed in IOM
- Directors resident in IOM

I am hardly naive.

The term used was "illiquid" not "solvent" and there is a distinction.

While I admit I may be wrong and stated originally that it was merely my guess, it remains my guess that if BF had not happened FTP would have had the liquidity to maintain operations and satisfy obligations and recover from the losses due to processor theft, prior DOJ seizures of processor funds, and the no-processor deposits.

This is different from saying that on 4/14/11 FTP had enough cash on hand to totally pay every account balance forthwith. Given what Todd Terry stated was said at the hearing and Subject: Poker's excellent follow-up regarding the uncollected deposits, it is pretty clear this was not the case.

But on a balance sheet before BF, those uncollected deposits would still be listed under "accounts receivable" and thus would offset the "accounts payable." After BF, the deal with the DOJ essentially turned those accounts receivable into bad debts.

Finally, please note that this is not meant to defend FTP in anyway. They played loose and fast with fire and got burned (and thus burned the players too) - on that maybe we can all agree.

Skallagrim

Would S:P ever let someone write an op-ed for them? Or are they only going to publish hard news pieces?

Did you think to google other instances of "unreasonable financial burden" as a reason for removing oneself from representing someone? Or just think "financial burden" - must mean client got no money?

It's basic NVG thinking if that's what you did.

Basic NVG thinking =