prolly deserves its own thread amirite?

You don't think Howard or Bitar would do the same? They obv received their share and he believes he is entitled to one. Do you see those guys pulling money from their pockets to repay the players?

alright theyre all huge scumbags.

Just the facts:

- Ferguson received millions in dividends (if that's what the SP editors mean by the term distributions)

- A big chunk of that was in bank accounts nominally owned by Pocket Kings, but substantively owned by Chris Ferguson.

- After Black Friday, Ferguson helped Full Tilt by giving 14 million of his own money. He probably lent that money in order to secure liquidity for the site with the expectation to have them returned.

- So now he asks for that money to be returned to him as he's claiming he's as much of a creditor as the players.

And if he is, then this isn't an immoral request.

To me this all goes back to what I think is the heart of the issue which most people think is clear and to me it's so out there that I am extremely perplexed: Essentially, the same time the company was going into the red thanks to phantom deposits and FBI forfeitures, the owners were paying themselves handsome dividends as if the company was highly profitable - which it would be if it didn't have phantom deposits and lost money to forfeitures.

So the questions to me are the following:

- Why were they doing that? Were they really defrauding the company under the idea that this was going to end and they better get out now with the loot? Ok, let's say they did that. Why on earth would they think it's a viable strategy and they wouldn't get caught? That's what's so perplexing to me. Perhaps, after all, they won't get caught and they will sell the company having made out with the money, but surely this couldn't have been seen as a risk-free, safe strategy, right? For all they knew, the company might have gone belly up and they might have either ended up behind bars or as constant fugitives. And surely, there's no way that everything that transpired between April of 2011 was part of FTP owners' calculations long before that.

- Alternatively. Why did they not help the company keep afloat? I mean, they are now faced with an avalanche of legal action plus they re selling the company for a pittance. Wouldn't the most profitable strategy long term be to sink money in the company in order to cover the losses and maintain control of the company? Long term, the company should be more profitable than any money they sank in back into the company in order to secure liquidity.

Perhaps at the end, this was a problem of collective action. With so many owners, it was difficult to co-ordinate and everyone was distrusting each other and/or expecting the next guy to put his funds to the site while they bid their time.

I dunno. All I know is that this is insanely complicated and while everyone is justifiably angry, one should withhold final judgement about people and situations. We ll figure out the whole picture eventually, but it will take time.

^ Poker community is coming for you, scumbags. Just think how many more embarrassing stories like today's their are.

So one Lawyer got 12 million alone from FTP.

As I mentioned months ago its in the best interests of all these lawyers to keep things moving as slowly as possible.

Its plainly obvious all these guys were taking out multiple millions while they knew that FTP had a big financial hole.

To me, thats clearly criminal. Thats not even negligent

They were not being paid dividends on profits but were clearly raiding the bank vaults of players deposits.

They used phoney accounting for years to keep the regulators at bay.

Why are we even surprised they commited bank fraud in the US?

Now they hav been found out I expect them to do ANYTHING to protect their interests.
The genie is out of the bottle, their reps are ruined, now they have to make sure they keep as much of the hidden cash/assets as possible.

I posted something similar earlier. My point was that I didn't think that they'd started out nor intended to rob anybody. The problem in my view is that there wasn't a competenent business person amongst them. Stars has competent business persons who took appropriate actions to cut off the PD's when they realized what it would lead to and were careful to maintain liquidity.

According to the internet Bitar was an equities trader. The rest of them are poker players. A Stars rep made the starky comment regarding the advisablity of treating (he picked PI) as your 'banker'. We get the point.

Now it's starting to look like it's every man for himself w/ positions hardening rather than being more flexible over at FT and that's very bad. IDK how much GBT has sunk into this so far but there comes a point sooner or later when they've got to walk away if things don't get going pretty soon from my pov based on deals that I've made.

I posted a followup on the other thread which comports with what you said.

It doesn't seem like it was premeditated fraud but rather a confluence of incompetence and miscalculation.

May be now it's every man for himself, but it doesn't seem to that the basic calculus which propelled the deal among the various parties has changed. Ferguson is haggling over what is over the large scheme of things spare change. Eventually he ll feel out his boundaries and he ll either get his piece or relent.

I doubt this Ferguson thing is going to torpedo the whole deal.

So...


anyone expecting the DoJ to file another amended complaint?

I want to be as unbiased as I can (or anyone owed money by FTP can be!)

Overall I think this latest article is a fantastic bit of work.

A couple of things that hit me from the article.

The Article/Subject poker are claiming that Jesus had bank accounts with money in them that the DOJ didnt either know about or knew he controlled.

I distinctly remember last year making the suggestion last year that it was more than possible that some of the major owners could have hidden away money/assets that the DOJ didnt know about.......

I was roundly slated by Noah and others for this suggestion.

Why is it so crazy? What about non-cash assets or transfers to freinds, family and lawyers!

These guys were the masters of washing money using multiple complex layers.

Any number of normal looking payments could have been used.

If I was a betting man, I would bet there are more assets/money out there.

These guys knew the legal grey area, they had to have assets which could be tuned into cash if needed to if their accounts were frozen.

Or a cash reserve held by a friend. (Hell even a duffle bag full of cash somewhere or high denomination poker chips)

The consensus from long ago was that they are amazingly dumb and short-sighted. Their behavior after BF can not be assessed nearly that generously however. It's been cowardly and abhorrent.

They were in a huge financial hole yet continued to pay themselves multiple milions of dollars.....

How can that be viewed as anything but criminal?

What about the banking fraud/transaction stuff?

What about the complex accounting fraud they signed off on to fool the regulators?

These arnt simple mistakes when it takes multiple people/persons and lots of complex planning to achieve such goals.

I love this " they were just poker players" defence......

Funny that they were smart enough to create/set up all these shell companies to try and hide/wash the money/transactions.

Sorry your argument they were just naive doesn't stand up to the facts.

While I agree......

Maybe you are missing some of the facts about Pre-BF?

Accounting fraud, Banking fraud and paying dividends to which they were not entitled.

Thats just a few of their favourite things!

FTP was in a huge financial hole long before BF yet they kept extracting money that didnt belong to them.

To me the above isn't just dumb/short sighted.........its clearly premeditated criminality.

I honestly don't think it matters much. It's not possible for me to have worse feelings for these people.

FTP was a massive fraud for a very long time. Did it start out as a fraud? Probably not. But it was always a criminal enterprise.

Did everyone with a piece of FTP know everything that was going on at the time? Probably not. But they now all know they were paid with stolen money. None of them seem to be making any efforts to give it back.

Naive isn't the word. Idiots is the word. Look at the things you've laid out above. Only an idiot would think that he could get away w/ stuff like that. Even a criminal wouldn't think that he could get away w/ stuff like that (he would've snatched/laundered and ran way before now) when they absolutely HAD to know that the DOJ ban-hammer would fall someday. If they didn't know that then they are super-idiots. Idiots, fools, clowns......call them whatever but criminals only after the fact of what they did because they were idiots that tried to get out from under what happened due to their idiocy, not from the beginning.

Those shell companies were on the order of 'oh, we're so clever, look at this impenetrable, byzantine labyrinth! Nobody will ever get to us.' Yup, like the US Gov can't handle stuff like that. Idiots, just plain idiots.

The 'they're a bunch of poker players' isn't offered as a defense but simply to explain why they were such idiots when it came to business. We in the know were enamored of their reps, blinded by the fools gold, w/o really paying attention to who was running the show bec things were fine for so long on a great to play on site. Of course I realize that hindsight is 20/20 but, looking back, it seems so clear the mistake so many of us made.

i feel like waiting to hear Tapie saying "Trying to buy FTP was the greatest loss of time and effort in my entire career. I am sorry to all the FTP players.

I can agree with that.

But I ve got two questions:

1. If I set out to rob a bank, I will make damn sure that I will have a plan that gives me a high probability of not getting caught. What was their plan, what was their end game we can deduce from their actions?

They defraud the company, the company goes under and they walk scot-free... how?

2. How does it make sense to intentionally defraud your own company when running it dilligently is probably more financially beneficial over the long term?

Now, there's no doubt that FTP did break the law, although it should be noted that most of these violations and probably those that are going to get them into tangible legal trouble -like the allegations of money laundering- weren't just victimless crimes, but actually quite beneficial to the poker community. If they could get away with that money laundering and maintain the cash flow in and out of the poker site, then the poker economy -and most of the US poker professionals- would prosper for many many years, right?

On the flip side, I don't know if the owners getting dividends when their company was bleeding money was illegal or not, but it was definitely poor business sense and immoral.

I think the intent matters:

It makes a difference whether they were trying to outright steal or whether they were just bending the rules or actively trying to fudge the numbers, but with the intention to repay everyone down the road one way or another.

Not to nitpick, but the PK accounts were controlled by Ferguson, not owned.

So you raise a lot of great questions, but I think many of them boil down to 1 fork:

(A) did Ferguson know about the extent of the shortfall before black friday. If not, how do you reconsider his actions pre bf if he was unaware of the shortfall?

(B) at exactly what point did ferguson find out about the expansiveness of the shortfall?

Im not sure we can properly evaluate/rationalize his actions until we know those issues.

This

Im confused, so this is gonna be a deal breaker for the repayment of players?

Man, back in the day i used to view in NVG more than only 1-2 threads, and it used to be a fun read as well.
Now, all i check is this ****y thread, with depressing content inside. No offense to anyone here obv, its circumstances.
Annoying
Yea btw this chris ferguson news have some influence on the potential deal?

S:P new article is really good, great work guys.

I am the most tilted I have been in 2012 after reading it.

Please someone tell me that those guys are going to end up in jail. Please.

This extract of article just appeared... anyone able to access the full one ?

"The owners of Full Tilt Poker agreed the final terms of their forfeiture agreement with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday (January 24th).

The deal means Groupe Bernard Tapie can now hand over the $80m needed to buy the company from the DoJ."

http://www.gamingintelligence.com/ma...ilt-completion