I am unfamiliar w/ this. Can you summarize or provide a link?

Isnt there a ton of proof that howard and co were running the company behind the scenes?

Situation is obvious to those actually effected. Your professional internet debate skills don't change the facts. Ivey received 40m in stolen player money. He knows it is stolen. He has not returned it. He may also be a decision maker in the largest fraud in poker history, which has destroyed the lives of many innocent people. This is true of all the owners. They need to do the right thing. It's sickening that there are individuals that think they have a right to that money.

im starting to lose my **** over this

sigh

Some of those individuals are probably their lawyers.

Lawyers like to give themselves a pass by saying that they are just representing a position and everyone deserves a defense. While everyone has a right to that, someone doesn't have to oblige them by providing their services in a way that furthers harm to others. If you represent a client in that manner, you are morally responsible for its effects. So to answer the unasked question, yes, I find such individuals sickening as well.

I also think this is dragging on for too long and GBT will loose interest at some point.
It is ridiculous that there have been people that got our hopes up by saying hang in there,good news just around the corner.
I am through with this now,and also all the talk here,all the last pages is just words and means nothing-there hasn't been any action for a very long time and it does not look like there will be any time in the near future.I was looking forward to FTP2 and wanted to give them all my action,but this total silence makes me so angry that I am only sick and tired of the whole matter.Its so disgusting!

Is there any consensus as to the reason for this seemingly longer than usual period of silence? Before we would at least have some news trickling through every few weeks or so, but its been completely quiet for a long time now.

This is def beyond frustrating at this point. It's beyond fairytale, it's inconceivable. Truly blows my mind that it has been over nine months already.

Honestly its ****ing ridiculous that its been over 9 months. They just expect us to just forget that a company we trusted just completely ****ed us because of their own greed/mistakes and that people involved are just going about business as if nothing has happened?

Then they just expect us to jump back onto FTP2 and continue as normal. **** that site, give me my ****ing money and put Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer and anyone else involved in pound me in the ****ing ass prison.

/rant

Link to the complaint. Lawyers ID'd on top of first page.

It may be the case that the law regarding keeping the distributions is on the side of the passive FTP shareholders. IDK, I haven't researched it but DTM seems pretty darn certain of it and he's not a dummy.

You want to talk moral talk to a philosopher. Stay away from the lawyers.

Like I said to him, that theory will be tested in court. I'm not sure your definition of dummy. His position is morally bankrupt however.

Howard? Yes.
Jesus? Yes.
Ray Bitar? Most definitely, more than the others.
Apparently Rafe Furst too.

And all four of them are facing charges (only Bitar's charges are criminal.) All of them are looking at having to give up megabucks.

Apparenty there isn't a ton of proof that Ivey and the other shareholders were involved in running the company, behind the scenes or otherwise.

Does "doing the right thing" mean paying players more than they are owed?

The players are owed their balances. Whatever part of their balances is missing is gone because dividend payments were made when they should not have been made. The directors who authorized those payments are responsible for giving the missing money back to the company so it in turn can pay the players. Somebody other than Ivey and the other non-director shareholders is responsible for the full amount. How can you suggest that Ivey has a moral responsibility to pay when there is already a legal responsibility on some others to pay everything the players are owed? The directors have a legal and moral responsiblity to pay the players in full. How can there be moral responsibilities to pay more than what the players are owed?

I'm sorry that you are sickened by the laws of your country.

For the owners? No, just the dividends. For the decision makers, clearly yes. Their responsiblity includes all damage done to the victims of their crimes.

What is there to say? The positions are clear. I believe those in possession of stolen property are obligated to return it. You believe that responsiblity lies solely with original thieves. Someday we'll see who is right legally. Morally, it's already clear.

I find many of the laws of the US sickening, and work to change them. Is that not allowed in legalismland? Must I think those laws represent moral truth because some idiots wrote it on a piece of paper?

You may apply for access to the federal docket yourself. There is a small per page charge. Not sure what the criteria are if you are non-US. Because Justia chose this case to host, the info eventually shows up there free. You will likely see the HL extension today or tomorrow.

The shareholders aren't liable, but the limited liability laws your argument hinges upon are not the reason, as they no longer apply once the corporate veil is pierced.


The real problem with going after the shareholders, even after piecing the corporate veil, is that all three methods of doing so require that the shareholder benefited from the activity that pierced the veil.

Whether you go after them for unjust enrichment, fraudulent conveyance, or clawback, the fact that the shareholder lost equity, equal if not greater than the dividends they received - as a result of the actions of the directors - makes recovery unlikely.

As bizarre as it might seem, a non shareholder like Durrrr who claims to have lost no equity, but made millions for endorsing the fraudulent scheme, would be an easier target legally from whom to recover damages.

Under unjust enrichment, the law doesn't care if you were aware of the fraud, if you ended up a net "winner" from your transactions with the fraudulent enterprise, you could be liable, but shareholder equity was probably greater than $500M prior to the dividend payouts being unlawful (the company being insolvent) so the unjust enrichment argument against shareholders seems untenable.

Under fraudulent conveyance, the receiver isn't required to be aware that the money he is receiving is money owed to creditors, but if the money he received falls short of equity lost, the shareholders could themselves file petitions for victim remission.

Dividend clawback is possible when a dividend seemed legitimate at the time it was received but in hindsight was clearly unlawful, but unlike a true Ponzi case where the actual value of the "business" is essentially nothing, the dividends the shareholders received seem to fall well short of what their equity in the company should have been - if not for the actions of the directors - so clawback isn't really on the table.

.

The company was run in a fraudulent and criminal fashion from the beginning with respect to US law. How is it that you value the company then? If no one had ever committed a criminal act, the company would not exist. I don't understand how you can value the company without the directors negligent decisions either. If they hadn't stolen the player money, they would not have had the money to run the business or they would not have been able to pay dividends. So you assume they would have grown the company the same amount without a 300m no interest loan? They would have paid no dividends? lol Clearly not. There is no market for FTP stock. There's no way of knowing what the company was ever worth (spare me the link to that stupid forbes article). BF would still have happened, which would have crashed its value. To argue that the share holders aren't net winners from FTP is redic.

We'll see if a judge dismisses the suits. If not, I think multimillionaires will have a tough time convincing a jury that the only people who should lose are the players. It will also be interesting to see what comes out in discovery. I'm sure there are no embarrassing details in the records of a company as well run as FTP. I'm sure they never received any above market pay for their "services." I wonder if they ever "suggested" that their friends should also be overpaid for their "services." Surely not. I'm sure the loans they took out were repaid in full. I bet an owner never broke any of the rules on the site and walked from it. There were only four owners that knew the state of the company? Of course, there were. You just never know what you might find in every email, memo and hand history from FTP though.

The players can make this a painful process for these people. They might perhaps consider that in their calculations.

Can you please stop pontificating that it is only the directors or only Bitar etc that can be held legally responsible for clawback. You are mistaken, but since you are quite happy to research such things, have at it. I have no intention of continuing to debate you on this, except to say that your premise is incorrect.

I'm definitely not saying the shareholders have some type of limited liability immunity, as DTM is want to grant them, but because the ROW business was greater than the 'unlawful' US business (which was estimated to be worth 1B), even if you include improper loans and exorbitant salaries, the courts could view the shareholders as net losers (victims).

The 'friends' that received exorbitant salaries might actually be ruled liable, Dwan was smart enough to recognize that early, and volunteer to repay what he received.

Now if we change the argument to one about shareholders who had knowledge, which can be proven with emails, etc., then I agree, all bets are off, and regardless of any class action suits, the trustee appointed to the player remission fund will indeed make this a very painful process for them.

It doesn t work like that. The ones that should be paying the money back are the ones who approved the dividends in the first place. You can t go back in time and change things. If someone received the money in good faith , then you can t charge them.

Yes, it does work like that. Although if you won't believe DF, clearly I'll never convince you.

And I'm not charging them with a crime. They have something that's stolen. Didn't know it was stolen? Ok, so return it.

I disagree with your assumptions about the value of the business. I could state a bunch more reasons in addition to the ones above, but there's no way to completely resolve this without FTP records.

One can only hope for the maximum suffering possible.