This interviewer is beyond tilting.

At 4:31 interview 7, when he talks of begging Tom Dwan for a couple of million whatever it was to keep the company going .. how about pointing out TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND WOULD HAVE GONE STRAIGHT TO RAY BITAR AS SALARY!

And where the hell is the question on member payments post Black Friday...dear god.

I was gonna let this go, but I just can't. I mean seriously guy? There is no theory of law that would allow a purchaser of property stolen from another to keep that property. It does not matter if the car was purchased from a dealer or found in your garage.

You speak about the buyer becoming a "bona fide purchaser" and while that may be true that does not convey any legal title to this purchaser. Most courts hold that a bona fide purchaser of stolen goods is a converter, even if there is no way he could have known that they were stolen. However, most courts have held that such a good faith purchaser is not liable for conversion if he is willing to give back the goods to the rightful owner on demand.

Nemo dat quod non habet, literally meaning "no one gives what he doesn't have" is a legal rule, sometimes called the nemo dat rule, that states that the purchase of a possession from someone who has no ownership right to it also denies the purchaser any ownership title. This rule is valid even if the purchaser does not know that the seller has no right to claim ownership of the object of the transaction (a bona fide purchaser).

In American law, a bona fide purchaser who unknowingly purchases and subsequently sells stolen goods will, at common law, be held liable in trover for the full market value of those goods as of the date of conversion. Since the true owner retains legal title, this is true even in a chain of successive bona fide purchasers (i.e., the true owner can successfully sue the fifth bona fide purchaser in trover). However, there is a remedy for successive bona fide purchasers. If the jurisdiction recognises an implied warranty that the seller has title to the property (Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in the United States), the bona fide purchaser can sue the seller for breach of that implied warranty.

In the hypothetical you outline if the police became aware of the stolen car they would (not could, but would) impound the vehicle and cause its return to the rightful owner. The presumably innocent purchaser of the car would then be left with a cause for action against the dealership that sold the car. However, if the purchaser of the car should become aware that the car was stolen the continued possession and use of the car would become a crime in and of itself.

You might want to do a little research on the connection between Howard Lederer and Andy Bloch's girlfriend, Jen Creason.

While it may have passed in September of 2006, the bill was actually first introduced on November 18, 2005.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr4411

The time frames which you specifically outline are consistent with what I am suspecting. They may have told you it was to be closer to the London exchange, but it seems more likely that when they first found out that UIGEA was on the horizon (end of 2005), they started making backup plans to move abroad just in case it became law. I'm sure they closely watched it's progression into legislation and when it passed the house (May 4th according to wiki, and July 11th according to govtrack) they decided to pull the trigger and make the move, again the time frame being very in line with what you described.

-ed

Any links you can provide??

How public was that information? Because for me UIGEA seemed to come out of nowhere.

she's howard's niece

Again, highly doubt it. NOBODY, and I mean nobody, thought the UIGEA would pass. Most people found out that it was being attached to the port bill the day before or the day it went to Congress.

It's just so unlikely that they would have this master plan some 9 or 10 months prior.

And, the company was preparing to do a float. Several of the projects in late 2006 were designed to create better financial reporting systems that would be required if the company went public.

I recall having several meetings with European auditors who were prepping us for assembling the financials we would need to file to go public.

If it was all a scam to get out of town before the UIGEA it was the most elaborate scam and the most amazing timing in the world.

Oh, and our offices in LA were two blocks away from the Federal Building on Wilshire Blvd where the FBI is located. Didn't seem like Tilt was too worried about the legal side.

EDIT: I said late 2006 but I meant mid-2006.

Jen who is married to Andy is Howard's niece.

http://www.pokernews.com/live-report...vent-2/?page=3

"Then, perhaps a bit jealous of Howard Lederer's railbirds (including Andy Bloch, his niece Jen Creason, and writer Michael Craig) the affable Farnood offered himself a round of applause."

So how'd those better financial reporting systems work out for you guys?

I don't understood the joke at the end but thanks for the link. Okay I get it now.

He was jealous Howard was getting applause so he applauded himself

Apparently they never went through with the projects after the UIGEA killed their chances of going public. :-)

Full Tilt, at least as long as I was there and from what I hear from people who went to Dublin with them the trend continued, was always very short-sighted. I would not be surprised in the slightest if they killed the project and put the resources onto other projects once the float was off the table. Gil wasn't asking for additional detail for the financials and a lot of the project had to do with being able to easily produce auditable hand histories.

i find significant the level to which lederer is trying to exonerate ferguson.

to be honest, in reading the details on here and in other places, i found ferguson seemed the most culpable of anyone. lederer was making public statements that were idiotic and making it at least plausible that he was ignorant, while ferguson was absolutely silent and seemed to have the closest connection to the corruptive part of the company. if lederer is even being halfway honest, that blame sure seems to shift. maybe whatever lederer and ferguson would be screwed by legally is the same thing, and they would have to go down together.

i think ivey's got to talk now, i don't see how he can let the negative PR from this stand without him rebutting officially.

If I steal a million dollars and short soybean futures and lose, I don't believe the counter party should forfeit their gain. But what players won and what people had on deposit was no longer worth 100 cents on the dollar once the player deposits were not covered and a percent of any money withdrawn after that point should be owed back to the player pool.

.

Is it just me or does Howard look like Karl Childers from Sling Blade???

howard lederer -- cant recall details to situations that he was responsible for yet he remembers exact dates, amounts, timelines, etc. when making accusations.

I highlighted "most courts" meaning not all courts and you left out the most relevant part to FTP when copying and pasting from wikipedia: "however it is often difficult for courts to make judgments as in many cases there is more than one innocent party"

The car was not the best example as someone might actually want their car back but in terms of money people don't care if they get they're physical dollars back, just the value of those dollars. You also can't really trace who the dollars went to and who is currently in possession of them.

Did those dollars go to the shareholders? To Poker Productions? To the WSOP? To the landlord? To the tax collector? To the lobster man? Who knows?

After some point in time when FTP stopped caring about keeping the amount of player deposits secured by cash on hand, as soon as money was deposited on FTP it was essentially stolen because that money was going to be used anyway the company chose to use it. That's when the conversion occurs and not when it's distributed to shareholders.

The DOJ is going to go after the BOD and that's where it's going to end in all likelihood unless they can't secure a significant amount of money from them. If there wasn't a deal with Stars to purchase and settlement I could see the DOJ going after individual shareholders.

My post was not meant to be relevant to FTP it was merely to point out that there is NO theory under the law wherein a "bona fide purchaser" can claim title to stolen property as you claimed was the case with the car. I did so because misinformation is far worse that no information.

By the way, I did not leave out the part you highlighted above, my information was not a cut and paste from Wiikipedia, my info came from:

Emanuel Law Outlines: Torts
By Steven Emanuel, Lazar Emanuel
Chapter 3 Intentional Interference with Property
Page 50 (E) 1 (a)

(my apologies for not referencing this source). Also, if you reference legal books you may often find that authors will sometimes reference "most courts" out of habit because in fact and theory most authors have not looked at every case from every court and therefore prefer not to deal in absolutes (i.e. ALL courts). But, in this case it says most courts because it is in reference to whether or not a bona fide purchaser is also a converter. As stated, most courts do hold that a bona fide purchaser is a converter. The second part explains that some courts do not attach liability to the converter as long as the property is returned to the owner.

The last part you added, regarding more than one innocent party, is in reference to claims where there are multiple bona fide purchasers suing one another in a domino like effect. However, the position and standing of these parties (bone fida purchasers) should not be confused with the position of the actual owner of the property (the person from whom the property was stolen). These bone fida purchasers have no claim under the law to ANY ownership right to the stolen property.

As far as the applicability of any of this regarding being a bone fida purchaser and FTP goes I really don't see it.

However, FTP customers are victims of a fraud and as such MAY have a prosecutable claim to any and all traceable assets stolen from them, in this case, cash or other real property if it was proven to be purchased with the missing cash. If, after the DOJ has made remission, victims are still damaged (meaning they did not all of their money back) I can certainly see a cause of action wherein they may lay claim to money distributed to FTP Owners.

Somebody please make a remix video containing all of the "Ay dunno"s that spewed from Coward Folderers mouth in this interview!! It would be like 10 minutes long/really awesome

the most tilting thing is asking dwan for 1.5 milly while paying ray ray a 200k monthly salary..i understand why some people didnt want to pay back as long as these clowns were getting that monthly salary...ivey would be a better investment on the fn craps table than to pay back imo.....they should of halted these huge monthly salaries before asking their pros to pay back...200k a month..GFY

I commented on the car analogy because I had made the same exact analogy in the past. Since then I happened upon a document that described a scenario where the car purchaser can keep legal title. Looking back at it now it seems to only be the case in GA and other states are as you described. Thanks for clearing that up.

I'm guessing the DOJ is going to consider the civil cases regarding the bank fraud related charges closed and satisfied by the money provided by PokerStars.

That leaves the fraud against the players by those indicted in the second amended complaint. PokerStars is taking responsibility for ROW players so that leaves about $150 or so million for the DOJ to return to US players. I don't know how much actually cash they seized on BF and how much if any will go towards remissions but I think they will also go after the BOD. That will be a much easier case than trying to go after individual shareholders. If the DOJ isn't able to collect enough from the BOD defendants then when the remission process starts the entity in charge of that may go after anyone who had received large sums of money from FTP, including the other shareholders.

That seems to be how other cases that involve fraud and remissions have been handled.

Does that sound about right to you? You obviously have a lot more legal experience than me.

That's not exactly what Howard said, he said that the GBT deal could have gone through in January, but they managed to block it (S:P did a story on how they managed to do this: Ferguson contested the way the company had spent his $14M), but Howard also admitted that the deal would have gone through over the Ferguson objection (the vote had already been made so all they could do was delay).

At the time I for one publicly attacked Ferguson for blocking the deal for his own interests, along with everyone else who was refusing to repay their loans, but hindsight now reveals how badly the GBT deal would have screwed the players, so Ferguson and his lawyer (Ian Imrich) should be commended for delaying the deal until the exclusivity period expired.



Ray Bitar was no longer on the FTP payroll, when this conversation took place he was sitting in a New York jail hoping a judge would allow him to post bail.

Everyone asking why Lederer and/or Ferguson didn't offer up the $1.5 million, their (known) assets were frozen by the government by this point.

did not realize ray was in jail by this time..thank u for that info

ferguson knew he was screwed if FT went belly up = ferguson leaves a bunch of money in the company? feasible?

also, Negreanu better have like a 2-hr rant video next week