Not sure this is true. There are obviously recreational players already getting burnt at Purple and other places. Better to have it out in the open so that this doesn't continue to happen.

In terms of getting serious investigations into possible fraud by MediaCorp and Purple, I think media coverage would make that way more likely. I think it'll also make MediaCorp inclined to treat the players better in terms of paying out.

Here's the link to FAQ, not really worth reading though:

http://www.purple-lounge.com/player-info/

The way I understand it the owners have lost money due to PL going down.

True if we could get a revolt going against other MediaCorp owned companies maybe this would help turn the screw on them.

Agreed I think MediaCorp have lost around £900,000 in this.

We really need to be able to see Purple Lounge's own accounts to see how they messed up so bad and where all the money went.

If they've blown £900,000 of parent company's money plus player deposits, where did this all go?

Looking at http://companycheck.co.uk/company/05132341 they last submitted annual accounts for the period ending Sept 2010, at this stage they had one director, Mr Christopher Simon Gorman OBE.

It would be helpful if we could either obtain the most recent annual accounts for Purple Lounge Ltd (however, i doubt they have filed any more recently since the period ending Sept 2010, as these were only filed on 25th Jan 2012).

Or if we could find out who the current directors are (this should be easy to as this information needs to be kept up to date I believe at http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/) and try to get in contact with them so they can at least explain the situation from their perspective. Though not sure if doing this could hamper future legal proceedings.

Or we could contact the auditors of MediaCorp, http://www.geraldedelman.com/. There office is based in London:

25 Harley Street
London
W1G 9BR

As a trained auditor myself I'd be happy to go visit them, I live only 20 mins ago and ask them a series of compiled questions. Though without seeing the latest Purple Lounge accounts we can't be certain I think that they audited Purple Lounge's accounts.

The point of licensing is to allow the licensing body to charge a fee to the poker sites in exchange for the poker sites having a location for incorporating their businesses that is free from government interference. Beyond this if you think licensing bodies are concerned about the players rights, you are sorely mistaken.

At this point I'm not sure why anyone would play anywhere other than PS. At least they have demonstrated the intent and ability to segregate and repay player funds.

Find out who the directors are and set up the isathief.com websites for their names and bounce them to the top of google for a start.

Whole situation is miserable really. Glad I don't play on any third rate sites, but it sucks for those with money tied up.

WHAT NETWORK?????

Poker is Entraction and Casino is Microgaming

I sent a complaint to LGA. Let's see what happens, probably nothing.

Here you go: http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...tml#post491831

Sara Vincent was head of Purple Lounge (from Oct. 2010 until Feb. 29th 2012), when she was appointed interim Media Corp CEO until May 16th.

Jason Drummond (resigned Feb. 16th) and Justin Drummond (resigned May 16th) were Media Corp's founders.

Also to blame I think is Nilesh Jagatia - Group Finance Director.

Now Media Corp purchased Intabet, a new gaming product expected to be launched with the start of the 2012/13 sporting season, which acts like a sports betting broker through which customers can place bets with a variety of bookies.

The acquisition brought new management on May 16th.: Adam Fraser-Harris (interim CEO) and Phil Jackson (chairman). They said the tie with Media Corp provides access to Purple Lounge user base, which would be beneficial to Intabet's anticipated launch. Two weeks later, after "a strategic and financial review", they liquidate the company and say "player loss is expected"! wtf???

What kind of business move is that? Didn't they perform proper due diligence before they settled the deal? Who would want to tie the name of a new gambling site to player loss? Don't they realize that 'PL's user base' is turning against them now?

I think, like others have said, that these new guys didn't know what they were getting themselves into and found out afterwards. My guess is some misappropriation of funds took place which the new management discovered only too late and wants nothing to do with it.

I also lodged a complaint with the LGA, even though they say on their website that "the Authority cannot assist players having issues with the aforementioned operator following the date of termination of the licenses" (http://www.lga.org.mt/lga/content.aspx?id=323344).

However, my withdrawal from Purple Lounge was pending for months before they went down and LGA claims that before the license termination process was completed, the licensee was compliant with the Remote Gaming Regulations.

But these regulations (http://www.lga.org.mt/lga/content.aspx?id=87374) say (art. 12 (4)):

This, coupled with the art. 40 from these regulations (regarding player funds segregation in a Clients’ account held with a credit institution approved by the Authority, "which shall at any time be at least equal to the aggregate of the amount standing to the credit of players’ accounts held by the licensee"), should mean that the money was there on April 23rd. and it should be there now, unless somebody misrepresented the facts then or stole afterwards.

In addition to this, the same regulations say (art. 13 (2)):

Despite all that, the LGA does not want to help at all, and Ms. Frances Blenheim, the complaints officer, is conveniently on leave from May31st until June 10th.

Finally, seeing that neither the new management (contrary to their initial intent) or the LGA (who's complaints officer went on leave coincidentally the same day the liquidation was announced), want to have nothing to do with what happened at Purple Lounge, I think somebody (preferably from the UK) should inform the the police and/or the LSE.

Based on what people are saying, the only instance in which Media Corp could be held responsible for players' funds is by launching a criminal investigation.

There's plenty of warning signs here, so I really want to know what happened with my money!

I think there may be a chance you can "pierce the veil" by going for fraudulent trading.

If the player creditor balances got really high towards the end it is possible they were trading whilst insolvent for some time. If they were solvent
it's also possible they were deliberately not paying players in order to preserve their cash reserves. Media Corp lent PL £1m and the reason they have liquidated PL is they are trying to recover as much of that loan as they can. So all players depositing in the final few weeks were reducing the size of that loan since PL had no intention of paying players by that stage. I think the legal situation is that the liquidator will have to repay Media Corp first from any cash left in PL.

The problem is that fraud is hard to prove but it would help if the final balances are high and payment had stalled for a long time period. It's possible this may have been planned for quite some time but again hard to prove.

Another angle is did PL themselves ever claim funds were seperated? It would be interesting if a claim like that was on their website for instance. That would be a fraudulent misrepresentation. That could even lead to criminal sanctions against the directors.

Interesting. I have the same problem - my withdrawal was pending for many months as well. I have written LGA the other day, but have little hopes of hearing back from them; I also wrote them about a months ago about Purple Lounge, but never heard anything back.

Please keep us updated if you hear anything.

lol of course they're not paying. why the hell would they? they have no legal liability and everybody else is getting away with it, so why would they take on that debt? out of the goodness of their hearts? precedences have been set! i have my own poker room coming soon called TotallySrslyNotGonnaScamYou poker, and I'm taking deposits now! Just PM me your credit card info and I'll send you the action so far on the table and your hole cards. It's poker by PM. Oh, and min deposit is $1000, and min cash out amount is 10K. 90% rakeback!!!!

From the 31/05/12 Media Corp trading update:

"The Board regrets any corporate failings in the past and seeks to assure shareholders that it is exploring routes to try, in some way, to mitigate the expected player losses, though this is against a background where the Group has loaned well over £1m to the division since its acquisition in October 2009."

How sincere.

Then:

"The Board does not believe that the Group will incur any further liabilities in respect of Purple Lounge over and above the realisation of the above loan. "

Does sound to me like they will be getting any cash left in the PL bank accounts before players.

If for example a player deposited £10K in April it will have gone directly to reduce the Media Corp loan. And how long were they taking deposits without paying players?

Another question is; What is the responsibilities of the poker networks? Why did Microgaming kick them out, how much did they know bout the scam? Shouldnt they tell players if they knew and then at least stop PL from take in new deposits? Same with Entraction, do they let anyone in on the network if they just pay the initial fees?

precedences have been set!

Hopefully a day will come , when poker sites owners\directors and there licensing cronies will be worried about facing jail time and losing there personal money.
Maybe you guys can make this happen.
Horrible situation . Best of luck.

Fwiw smaller cashouts were working until the end. I took out my last €2k just a few weeks before they shut down. Call me lucky I guess.

My $7.7k cash out was pending for several months fwiw.

Yeah it seems no one with any sizable cashout request got their money. It was the same way with FTP in my experience towards the end.

I guess in the future if you think a site is going busto, its better to request smaller cashouts than just snap cashout everything if you have a larger balance.

I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment of this post. I have sympathy for those who got caught up with the Full Tilt collapse, since nobody saw it coming, but since then anybody who has money on a site that is anything but super-secure is knowingly playing with fire and should not expect much sympathy when they get burnt.

This site didn't serve American players so had nothing to fear from the DOJ. It's parent company was publicly listed on the UK stock exchange. It claimed to have segrated funds. What are we supposed to do to make sure a site is secure?

Bet with established companies with a long history of providing online poker, are publicly listed, are known to have run a profitable business for a long period of time and where online poker does not represent a large part, or all, of their business.

For example, a company like William Hill - they have been around for something like 50 years, have thousands of profitable high street betting shops in the UK, their profits are in the hundreds of millions of pounds for recent years, their online poker operation has been going for many years (I think I remember playing with them in around 2004) and have built up a reputation and name that much of the rest of their business is built upon.

Betting with a poker site owned by such a company is a big step up in risk e.g. playing on Betmost, which is owned by William Hill. Likewise for Purple Lounge, only more so since Mediacorp's core business is not gambling and I don't believe they have much experience of the online gambling industry (correct me if wrong - I don't know too much about them). It feels like they were probably just dabbling in the online poker world, which is obviously risky.

I also do not believe that Pokerstars is as risk free as many people on 2+2 seem to think, although they are still one of the safer sites for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oShTJ90fC34