It is pretty clear the horribly managed and criminally run FTP was throwing money at these players. Why people blame a bunch of gamblers for accepting j secured lines of credit with no payback schedule is weird.

Nobody complaining about it would have told FTP, "no I don't want your 1 million dollar unsecured line of credit", so the vitriol against these pros is mostly misplaced.

The blame still remains with the criminals who stole the money and foolishly squandered it. It is not the fault of most of those players your money was stolen and they had no part in it

As for tapie free rolling Barry is 100% accurate. Tapies entire plan has been to get into this as cheaply as possible. If and when the deal is done I am confident the row payout will lead to a lot of vocal complaining clearly tapie is acquiring these pro debts for nothing as part of the deal but in terms of the overall deal is being used to offset other parts.

I remember many months ago when people thought tapie was just going to drop 500 million and bam. Spending 100 million or 200 million on a company that had probably never made money and has unique assets with unclear value and it is still a risk. Given what it will take to get the site going with promotion and advertising he has to get it for as little as possible or the deal does not make sense.

At this point tapie is going to spend between 40-200 million dollars for the FTP software which may or may not allow them to make money. That is what it all boils down to at this point.

Back to the pros, getting mad at most of them would be like hassling the homeless guy because your buddy who owes you $50 have them a buck. Obviously some players have culpability and a lot do not and people calling for players to be ostracized for accepting a line of credit, that is too much

No way he is buying the company. All the liability would transfer. He is likely buying the debt for nothing as part of the deal and then collect on it to offset other costs.

His lawyers would be beheaded if they allowed him to buy FTP as a company.

Taking a marker puts you on the hook CRIMINALLY. Doing that to pay off what is likely a completely unsecured debt would be as dumb a thing as any person could do.

Taking out loans isn't the problem. Not paying is. It doesn't matter whether this is a small thing or a big thing for GBT. These guys should commit to paying up and escrowing the money if requested. Also comparing Ivey or even Matusow to the homeless is redic beyond words.

FTP was clearly profitable as well. They were short 330m on 4/1. They pulled 440m in dividends in the previous four years. If the company was run in a remotely reasonable way, it may well have doubled that 110m. You can argue about whether it will be profitable in the future. Saying it probably never made money is false.

Unless conditions were set when the loans were made, no interest exists. It is highly unlikely that there was and in the us there is no such thing as statutory interest. All tapie or the doj could do is sue for the money, which does not guarantee any sort of payback.

Because of the way these loans were made, most likely, they would be tougher than normal to collect. If I knew any if these players I would not advise any of them to try and make any sort of pay back at this time. I don't know the details of the loan agreements but given everything else I know I am sure some of them could challenge them being loans in the first place.

I think everyone is sailing far off point in thinking these players owe it to everyone to pay back this money they may or may not owe.


Regardless unless interest and/or penalties were specifically agreed to in a signed contract then they are never going to get that nor have leverage to get that.

The reality is the doj and tapie have little leverage here against these players except for a lawsuit. For a busted player that threat is meaningless.

Whos down for a rally in front of Howards house. We have the right to do that right, I will fund it out of my own pocket. Whatever costs may be.

Statutory interest is just that, written in by the law ((both IRE and UK -so probably Alderney)- it's for late payments and usually starts when the debtor refuses to dialogue and is in default.

In this case there would likely be no back-interest and I expect GBT are offering much better terms than an administrator would in liquidation.

I expect the loans were 'loans', but it depends how they were recorded on the books and also how the recipient received them (into their FTP a/c et.c).

If the recipient claims they were not a loan and i.e. a bonus/salary/income distribution and tax wasn't paid then their argument it wasn't a loan surely fails and wouldn't that then be a matter for the IRS?

The fact is some like BG have acknowledged they owe the money to FTP and it was a loan; means that the others likely received similar terms.

There still remains the possibility they could be sold on to a debt-collection agency by FTP before any forfeiture agreement and the proceeds would replace whatever valued amount for these assets if neither DOJ or GBT want to litigate it. The debt would be legally owned by someone else entirely and passed on.

Naturally, this will be a lower amount and would mean that the price would be adjusted as Gioco says. Less paid to the DOJ means less in the pot for US player repayment.

Don't you realize all these big mouths in here don't leave the house?

LOL This He couldn't get 20 guys to show up. And they (the usual suspects) can get twenty UNLV football players there easy.

Many states have statutory interest rates, for example, see: http://www.myfloridacfo.com/aadir/interest.htm

What a cluster**** this has all become...

@markksman, You say...."Nobody complaining about it would have told FTP, "no I don't want your 1 million dollar unsecured line of credit", so the vitriol against these pros is mostly misplaced."

Umm...actually a responsible person would say this! When you borrow money it is your ethical responsibility to pay it back and this is regardless of what the terms were. Otherwise you are a thief. This is why online poker will NOT be legalized, due to the unethical collective consciousness of poker players.

Can we now conclude that online poker is rigged?

It has always BEEN a cluster****. Unfortunately.

We've already done amazingly well to get this far. I was optimistic after the FTP shareholder vote... but who knows at this point.

it's a never ending see-saw. I can't take the swings anymore.

Either way we should know the outcome with Tapie in a couple weeks or so. Throw up the final hail Mary.

+1 to that.

in most sports/games there are a handful/minority of bad apples.

in poker there are a handful/minority of good people.

does anyone know where Chris, bitar and Howard live; if so i seriously think we should pay them a visit; i am less and less hopeful that we will get our money unless we teach these ****ers that they cannot get away with it

Yea, you would be right. He is buying various assets of the company yes.

Yes, me.

According to long time 2p2 reg John Kim Howard and his family was spotted in Vegas yesterday in Town Square at Nu Sanctuary Lounge. So he's still out and about apparently.

Plus there was the whole Howard & Doyle at Five Guys encounter.

I don't post very frequently but had a question regarding MM

If he has a contract with FTP saying he gets X amount of money a month and hadn't been paid for a few months prior to BF.

He owes FTP1 700k from money they loaned to him BUT does he have a fair argument that he shouldn't owe FTP1 the money because they breached??

Not defending Matusow AT ALL just curious what this possible and I think likely scenario means.

Please someone informed like Noah or Diamond Flush could answer this.

Like a lot of ppl in this thread I have a significant money tied up in FTP as well and getting information from various poker articles INSTEAD OF getting information from FTP1 or Tapie just saying anything.
Just my 2 cents hopefully someone "in the know" can answer this.

It depends if he was performing on his end of the contract. If he was performing and not being paid then yes, that would probably offset his debt. But I think I read that he was being paid 30k a month, meaning it wouldn't offset it much. He'd still owe $640,000 that he does not have. Broke guys like him should agree to work off (free sponsorship) their debt.

Zero chance Matusow is owed enough by FTP (in account balance or unpaid "sponsorship costs") to account for 700k. He's well known for being a busto clown whose degen nature overextends itself beyond whatever means he has. This is the original reason he never owned a piece of FTP in the first place.