Thanks for letting me know how you feel Mason - feelings are important.

My opinion is that Madison Poker seemed to know about slow paying and other issues with PPC for a while, yet never made this stuff public until someone else blew the lid off it in this thread.

Maybe I'm wrong, but not sure my opinion is uncalled for.

Well, there's a difference between having a stake in the company and using your name to promote a company. Aaron Rodgers provides his name to various companies, but if Adidas, Ford, or State Farm were to go under, you wouldn't hold the Big 1-2 responsible.

To disavow is to deny any responsibility or support for, which Mark, and the other pros, did in my statement. This was their post/comment. None of them are hiding and in fact all three of them are quite pissed. Some of the news organizations have reached out to one or more of these guys and as far as I know, none of the three of them have chosen not to comment.

Just because any one of these guys or all of them choose not to get caught up in a 2+2 post, doesn't mean that their not paying attention to what's happening.

Do you happen to know for how long did they know about the slow paying and other issues? Was this only recently known to the pros?

Following up on my previous post, here is some more food for thought:

Both LLCs mentioned are in Broward County. As long as both men also reside in Broward County, jurisdiction would clearly be in Florida's 17th Judicial Circuit. Florida Statute 812.012(6)(b) is Florida's "Civil Theft Statute." We would need a tally of all monies believed wrongfully retained/diverted. Let's call that amount "X". Demand would then be made upon them to return "X" within 30 days of being served with the demand. If they fail to produce "X" within the 30 days, they would then become liable for 3 times "X". It's a sweet statute and I have used it many times.
Of course, another alternative would be to try to sell the idea to the State Attorney for the 17th District. If they took the case (and as a former financial crimes prosecutor I can tell you that it has a lot of appeal), then justice would be served at the public's expense.

If you read through the timeline I provided, I think you'd see that I only learned about withheld payments as of last Friday. If you choose to not believe that, then there's nothing I can do. However, the only reason there was any delay in any statement was in the interest of the unpaid parties getting a chance to collect their earnings before going public.

Calling him full of himself seemed to be uncalled for. Questioning his motives like you did here seems appropriate.

As far as I know, I was the one to inform them after I heard from one of the unpaid players. Chris was involved in his own issue with the PPC about not getting paid by them as well, but I'm not sure what the details are about that, just that he hadn't gotten paid.

Ok then - please accept my apologies.

For some reason, I thought you were aware of the slow paying issues for a while.

Absolutely, this fiasco isn't about me. No worries here at all.

After reading through this thread, I've got to question how viable these independent poker events are absent significant sponsorships (World Poker Tour with TV tie ins) or direct connection with a casino (WSOP -Caesers). Seems to me that otherwise, the additional rake that would be required to be withheld from player entries beyond paying the host casino would dilute the payout structure to the point that it would be untenable from the player's perspective.


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Many tours example WSOPC and WPT charge the casinos to hold their events ballpark figure is $125,000 to $150,000.

Great call. Like TDA Rule #1, exceptions to rules should be allowed in the best interest of the poker community.

Best wishes.

Poker news had a piece saying that three final table players had retained a lawyer and sent the aforementioned letter. It seems they are seeking there prize money back (only read the blog snippet) but would the real number be greater?

Prize pool plus monies withheld from previous tournaments plus casino fees?

Also (just me speculating) would Florida law allow one to seek relief against all their companies assets, as their dirty (stolen) money is assumed to be co-mingled with their cleaner assets? What does Florida allow for punitive damages? If Bryan and Sandy committed fraud they deserve to be bankrupt (and really in jail as this seems to be the second time)...the corporate veil has to be pierced in this case, right?

Sorry for the bad communication, I was trying to point out the vast difference in tone Madison Poker had before anything was "revealed" (sorry rogue one got in the way!), if anything I was trying to defend JBrouchu vs Mason, and point out those very recent tone changes of the person Mason jumped to defend.

I felt like it was absurd for Madison Poker to make both of these statements 3 days apart, completely change his tone, and then somehow not have any "new" information.

Interesting. Then, the question begged is the level of due diligence required of casinos. A subject that would be of interest to the aforementioned regulators.

If you want to relay an introduction through my office, each side can email me at David@Gzeshlaw.com

Gino's PM have been enabled since his first post.

Very minor point at this time. Ut if th limit was set based on us reporting requirements then setging it right at 10K is sllly. Do you not expect me to have any other cash like i fly home without enough to buy a cup of coffee.

I think what makes this different is that the event that has not been paid out was a championship at the end of their "Tour Season" in a foreign country and many entries were satellites/won entry into through another tournament.

I assume that all tournaments in US casinos had all of the players paid on the spot. If i found out otherwise that would be last tournament I play on their tour.

In a US Casino as soon as the first person went to the window to collect a big payout and a cashier was like, sorry go talk to the PPC to get paid and if the PPC followed that with, hey we will email you next week or some BS that there would be a pretty big scene/riot. IANAL, but there are several lawyers in this thread, and i would assume the host casino would be liable in the US.

Every tournament venue functions as, bustout, go to cashier, get paid, i would imagine in any country if someone went to get paid and were given some kind of an IOU that this would cause quite a scene and said player definitely inform remaining players in the tournament of the situation.

The problem comes from not paying the host casino directly. From reading this thread, it seems like the casino in Aruba was basically holding a play money tournament and PPC was paying them the "rake"/fee instead of the casino collecting the rake and paying the promoter a percentage of that (or whatever their deal entailed).

The "prize pool" came from collecting satellite payouts from other casinos (with most likely a split on rake).

Did anyone fully buy into the Aruba tournament? If so, where was that money sent to?

^^ I know of multiple people that bought in to the main in Aruba with cash. I imagine they paid out that money until they ran out...

"Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me."--Anon.

Anyone who does any business with these two in the future deserves any bad outcome that transpires as a result. You don't have control over all of their actions, but you sure can decide to protect yourself from these two.

Clickit

I mentioned this above, but Gaming Commissions in each US state do not take lightly casinos in their jurisdictions not paying patrons money they are due.

US Casinos advertised, collected buyins and ran an event under the laws and jurisdiction of the gaming commission in their state. The buyins were collected and qualifying event was played in their State .

These gaming commissions would be the best suited to sort this mess out and investigate.

p.s. thought I've never dealt with regulator in Aruba, from what I've experienced with "gaming commissions" in various other Caribbean islands, contacting them would be futile as the cronyism runs super deep.

Serious props to OP and all others who helped bring this to light.

Very glad to hear casinos (including MDL) cutting ties with them. Seems unlikely at this point that everyone is made whole but preventing further damage is about all that can be done at this stage, and it sounds like this went from rumblings to outting within the community in a relatively quick time frame, which hopefully prevented more players from being fleeced.

I was prob wrong with above.

Heard from pretty good source that since US casinos met their agreed upon obligations to players by xferring money to organizers in Aruba , the US State gaming commissions will likely say all obligations were met and not under their jurisdictions.