Somebody was calling PK's financial statements pretty much useless since other companies like My West Nook are heavily involved financially speaking but for which we don't have any solid numbers.

I'm getting very curious about this MWN biz. How come we never heard of it ? How come it's not included in defendants by class action suits, or in DoJ indictment ? What is its precise relationship with FTP ? Reasons for asking this is to understand the whole corportate scheme behind FTP and maybe find some more sources of potential payback for players, as well as a potential location of a lot of the lost $... (the sentence about MWN mentions about 1M$ in €).

Google is absolutely blank, save one piece of info found in the Irish Examiner published 2 months before BF (Wednesday, February 02, 2011).

QUOTE (emphasis added) :

(...)


The accounts for the 12 months to end April 2009 show that pre-tax profits declined by 26% from €8m to €5.9m. Gross profit fell 5% from €47.1m to €44.7m.

The abridged accounts do not provide a revenue figure. However, a note states that the company recorded sales of €62.49m to a connected company, My West Nook Ltd during the year. Pocket Kings Ltd had accumulated profits of €11.4m at the end of April 2009.

A related company, Pocket Kings Consulting Ltd, doubled its pre-tax profits during the same period from €563,087 to €1.1m and its gross profit also doubled from €5.6m to €11.7m.

(...)

"Confirming that the company will continue to recruit following the 100 new positions being filled, the spokeswoman said: "This growth trend is estimated to continue at this strong rate for all of 2011 and beyond."

Original piece here : http://www.irishexaminer.com/busines...#ixzz1Wx8JVEW6

Any input ?

I am giving up reading all this. I need to spend some time on playing.

Would it be possible to make a closed thread with facts? A thread including press releases etc. Rather than all these non sense posts.

Interesting news:

http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/09/...e-stars-funds/

I wish this would also happen with some of the FTP seized accounts.

My West Nook isn't named as a defendant in the Segal/Hammer/Terry lawsuit but in the section where they name Pocket Kings Ltd. it says that Pocket Kings Ltd. is a related party to My West Nook Limited, Filco and Pocket Kings Consulting Limited. Note that this lawsuit has John Does 1 to 100 as defendant so I think there probably is room to add them as one of the John Doe's pending more information on this company.

Edit: slow pony with subject poker article

Thanks for the link. Interesting news, very well done PokerStars. I can only imagine the perfect books they would have to show the DOJ to convince them of the money in there that was not gathered from USA players rake.

No way FTP has good enough records and books to do this. They couldnt even make player accounts reflect unprocessed withdrawls/bounced cheques for months after black friday.

so is this release possibly just an isolated incident due to jurisdiction or is the DOJ potentially releasing player funds on a larger scale? Either way this is very surprising.

The DOJ never seized any player funds and specifically said so. It looks from the article like the account contained some money derived from USA players and some moneyderived from ROW players, and they got the ROW portion released.

Right, should have clarified frozen. Still, can Noah say if this is something we could see more of?

Wonder how much they actually let Stars get back.

Good job PS's lawyers.

Noah, thanks for posting this....

Besides knowing the monthly expenses which we both referred to in earlier posts, what we think is also interesting is the following:

a) My West Nook is a BVI company (which means we will not be able to get financial statements).
b) The Audit fully discloses that FILCO and My West Nook are companies under 'common' control.
c) The Audit declares in the final note that the Ultimate Parent Company is considered to be Tiltware itself.
D) PK over two years maintained significant cash reserves equal to about four months reserves as of 2010 (which may explain PK's ability to operate since June 29th with no income).
E) the audit shows 560+ employes in 2010, but we know from various sources that was closer to 700 by April 2011 (they almost doubled from 2009 to 2010).

'D' Probably explains how FTP has been able to operate PK for the last couple of months - cash in reserve. It also may mean that they are not actually spending player money (per se of course, since really all money remaining could be claimed to be player money now) that was ordered ring fenced by the AGCC (which probably means some player funds are still available, even if they are small compared to what is owed). Assuming these cash reserves were close then PK can operate until probably end Sept/ early to late Oct max (one has to assume significant legal costs and increased operating costs with new employees in 2011). It also seems likely that PK cash reserves could have accounted for some of the money FTP was willing to put back into the company after BF and before they were shut down (or after), since that would have been easily available with no cash call required to owners.

idk if i really buy that the SP crowd has "inside sources" or that NSD or anyone else here can more than speculate. Given the timing of story on SP its most likely that they get their news from the same place everyone else does -- by monitoring the court filings.

If there were really inside sources involved, i think we would have hears something about this last week when the deal was actually made.

edit to add --- i would have thought this was a hoax if it wasnt on justia. I would have assumed that whatever attorney drafted it (stars side or DOJ side) would have been able to spell "Luxembourg"

Thanks Noah for prev post (and all others actually) and tx Ledason for pointing to it.

@Ledason - your analysis, as are a lot of things u posted here, is v interesting but I keep wondering : am I the only one to think it bizarre that on one hand "almost all of [PK's] money comes from My West Nook" and on the other we barely heard of it and it was barely mentioned in legal documents (while a bunch of other FTP-related entities are identified as defendants throughout the various cases) ?

I mean in following the money trail, this ghostly biz MWN seems like a fairly obvious point of interest imo whether for DOJ or players. #wishfulthinking - not mentioning truth's sake and a minimum level of transparency, seems like players are owned, at least that, at this point

Or is it the one company out of the FTP-sphere that got run so properly that there is no point going after it ?

I also have to wonder of the potential relevance of the above in relation to speculations that indeed "if there is money to be found it has been found" which sumrises certain responses to earlier interrogations itt regarding the possibility of more money floating around besides the easily seizable/freezable ones and probable millionz in casinos/suitcases/Caiman Islands that might be just not worth to go after.

ps : yes I understand that MWN could be named codefendant anytime in most suits, but my question is : what stops anyone from doing it now ? If Todd Terry ever sees this post, he may have a clue. So far, I don't.

Mr. Lederer,

Here are some people that may possibly be involved in your misfortune:
Eric Holder, Harry Reid, David Bonderman, Jon Kyl, Leon Black, and Steve Wynn. Be sure to go to Ireland first.

Here is seed I'm planting:
http://www.larryflynt.com/mycms/inde...t01returnid=15

Here is result of Larry's masterful move:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/116810-1

here are some leads:
Harry is so corrupt but here is just one lead.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_474902.html

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=158

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO-0NXi50Vk

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-ko..._b_141919.html

So disappointing to see poker return to the scum and slime to which it came. Thnx Howard and Ray. 150 millz from USA + the rest of the world's money stolen. f ftp.

I want to see those responsible burned at the stake. I'll even fly to the USA to watch.

Scum and slime *from which it came? I've been playing live since AC allowed poker in the early '90's. I don't remember any B&M play poker related scandal that comes anywhere near the scandals of the online poker scene. Somebody prove me wrong.

I didn't take that from anything I have read of NoahSD's posts. Perhaps I missed something. Care to point it out?

Legally, it is not the DoJ that caused poker players damage. The DoJ were performing their duty, which is, as you say, to catch bad guys. It is not their job to compensate people who get hurt by bad guys.

I think you would have a hard time making the case that the DoJ acted with reckless disregard to player's interests. The DoJ didn't treat FTP and Stars differently. US players at Stars were inconvenienced by having their money tied up for a couple of weeks and now they cannot play at Stars any more, but they got their money back. FTP players are in a different boat, but not because of the DoJ - it's because of how FTP operated. It is not up to the DoJ to fix that. The DoJ's view, as expressed in their PR, is that it is up to the sites to reimburse the players.

I'm not saying that the DoJ want players to go unpaid. I'm saying that getting players paid is not part of their job, so it isn't one of their official goals. Individual employees at the DoJ may indeed prefer that players get paid, but they are limited to operating within the law, and within their defined powers.

I have said in the past that I do not think it is impossible that the DoJ might negotiate, as part of a larger settlement, the unfreezing of some assets if it was guaranteed that those assets would go to paying players. I do not see how, once funds have been forfeited to the DoJ, those funds can then be turned over to players.

I'm not sure which "this" you are referring to. Hopefully this response addresses your concern.

What do you mean the DoJ didn't have to let Stars pay Americans? What right or power did they have to stop them?

They didn't negotiate settlements to allow the sites to use the domains to pay players. They negotiated settlements which allowed the sites to use the domains to pay players. Don't confuse purpose with effect. They negotiated the settlements to get the sites to agree to stop serving US players.

The DoJ have no reason to actively prevent sites from paying money the sites owe to players. It is not illegal for sites to transfer money to players. At the same time the DoJ are not going to allow players to be paid using money that the DoJ regard as rightfully belonging to the US, through fines or forfeitures.

To the extent that paying out funds weakens the sites ability to serve US players, having the sites pay back players is an aid to the DoJ's goals.

Perhaps the DoJ could have made it more difficult to pay players, by not making the agrement to return the URL's. But that would have been acting against one of their own primary goals, to stop the sites from operating in the US. In making the URL deal, the DoJ got what they wanted: they got the sites to agree not to serve US players. What did the DoJ have to give up to get this agreement? Nothing that they wanted to hold onto. They have no reason to hold onto money that belongs to the players but not to the US government. So they let Stars pay players out of the player money pool. If FTP had one, they would have let FTP pay out of that too. They gave the URLs back. So what? The DoJ doesn't need those URLs. They don't want to operate poker sites. The DoJ did not give up frozen or seized accounts, because they regard the money as potentially belonging to the US.

In the Neteller case, I believe the payouts were part of the negotiated final settlement. Perhaps the DoJ don't care whether Neteller paid the money to the players or to the court, as long as Neteller paid. We don't have a final settlement in the FTP case, so those funds are not flowing.

They let them pay, but they did not unfreeze assets. In fact, they kept everything they seized plus demanded more in fines.

part of the 4-20 DOJ press release re the domain name agreement was "The agreements allow for
PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to use the pokerstars.com and fulltiltpoker.com domain names to facilitate the withdrawal of
U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies."

So yeah, the DOJ is at least giving lip service to the purpose of US players getting paid.

That said, i think this one line has been grossly over interpreted.

so whats the conclusion/analysis of this financial audit?

they did not make $12M in profit in 2009/2010 did they? On page 6, what do they mean with gross profit? Where is the revenue? How come these numbers are all so low?

Well there's also the fact that someone has to carry out negotiations with prospective buyers too.

Love him or loathe him he is probably the best positioned person inside this whole messy saga to conduct negotiations as he is one of very few that is in possession of all the relevant information from the web of companies that make up FTP.

Hopefully he also has a team of "Professional" advisors around him too and by this I mean outsiders who can look at this objectively but havent a clue if this is actually the case or not.

Well if Pokerstars have found a way of getting money back lets hope the FTP lawyers call them up and ask them how they did it.

Hopefully they can do the same but it does appear that it would be heavily dependant on FTP showing clearly that the money wasnt derived from US players.

Unfortunately FTP were far more dependant on US players and funds than Pokerstars were as it made up a greater percentage of their business (an educated case so dont hold me to it) so it may not even be worthwhile.

u could be right, I was referring to the times that it was run by cheating, thieving cowboys. This is much worse than those times. Amazing to see poker players outdoing the past in scumbaggery.

It doesn't really seem right that the US government can keep seized money from a company that has victimized their whole customer base.

The recent court filing in the civil case does seem to suggest that the DOJ will release funds from co-mingled accounts given evidence that the other monies are from ROW activities (perhaps if the evidence also shows US player derived funds). However at this stage of the proceedings to release these funds pre-trial surely isn't the burden of proof on the defendant in rem or 3rd party?

The agreement is win-win for DOJ and PS, PS gets use of the other >$5.5 million money and can transfer it out whilst the DOJ gets agreement by the defendant in rem( PS) that the specified sum is "derived from online poker play for real money in the United States" and therefore subject to the cited violations pending judgment.

The statement "derived from online poker play for real money in the United States" also seems to suggest that any US player derived monies will remain subject to DOJ restraint (for now at least).

I believed this too but when researching the Neteller case couldn't find such a statement and in the DPA section 7("regarding distribution of player funds") states ~ $94 million was held in trust by Neteller and at their own expense will be returned to US players. So it could be either..

Also as I posted US criminal forfeiture allows separation of co-mingled assets:
Given this exists and proceedings are criminal and civil and that the DOJ would like to avoid a twin track litigation in foreign courts, separation of "from online poker play for real money in the United States" from the equivalent ROW quote is prudent imho.

In all fairness, they need it more than I do.