FT owes me $0.

BG owes me $0.

But BG is a straight up honest boss.

Just my $0.02

He just admitted in an interview and on a poker forum that he owes a debt, I think that would be enough for it to hold up in court.

I'll try to find the quote but I'm like 90% sure I remember a statement from the DoJ saying that in the case of bankruptcy there would be no prejudice between US and RoW accounts, that all creditors including shareholders owed money as well as all players would be treated the same in terms of the fact that they had a debt owed to them by an insolvent company that could not deliver 100% of it. It's possible I misread this and that only covers assetts FTP currently owns and not money seized but I believe it was talking about both.

edit: dothemath beat me to it

That's more like your $1,000,000. I mean, the guy didn't defend Russ Hamilton post superuser scandal. He didn't defend Lederer, Ferguson, and Ivey post Black Friday. He didn't welch on $400,000 to Full Tilt. He didn't...Oh wait...

The AGCC report referenced in your first link has been shown by Subject: Poker to be erroneous. FTP's shortfall or loss from all sources may have been about $330M, but a substantial portion of that was not seized by the DoJ. For instance, over $100M is from phantom deposits. The DoJ amost certainly does not have and will not have enough to cover the full amount of all player balances. It is uncertain whether the DoJ can get posession of money legally available for use for compensation that will be sufficient to cover the amount of US player balances.

Ace on the River Ace up my Sleeve was a CF& HL book pre BF

According to the rules supposedly governing FTP, it was wrong to give players a loan. There is nothing in the rules that says it is wrong to get a loan.

Most people wouldn't be able to get a loan from a casino, but some casinos made a business decsion that Barry could, based on his track record and the stakes he played. Was it wrong for him to take advantage of such an opportunity?

The difference between these FTP player loans and those phantom depositors who deliberately took advantage of FTP's payment processing difficulties (and who are rightly getting trashed) is that these depositors never intended to pay up, under any circumstance. Barry is more like the people who made deposits that never cleared but had every intention that the deposit should clear. Some people are trashing these depositors too, but not rightly so.

That report is correct, but they apparently made an error in their initial statement, which they corrected. According to the report the 331M consists of 42M stolen, 131M phantom deposits and 58M seized.
The total shortfall was 346M.

Because I care here is my plan!

Barry you give me the $400G-I will put it safely in my high interest savings account and when the deal is done (at this rate should be about 2025) I will give GBT the $400G unless US players have not been paid in full in which case I will give it to the DOJ.
This will take the pressure off you and you can go back to being the stand up guy everybody thinks you are. This will make everybody happy as GBT will have security in knowing his funds are safe as long as the deal goes through.

I think the above post sums it up really nicely.

Effectively, the type of loan Barry got was a demand loan. With a demand loan "in a timely manner" means when you are asked to pay. Barry says he wasn't asked to pay before BF.

After BF, but before a settlement it is not clear that Barry paying would have resulted in any more money being available to pay any players. Barry claims he is hanging on to the money until it is clear it will go to players, rather than be burned up in FTP's meltdown or going to some foreign company who might not pay players. There is a legal argument that money paid to the DoJ for assets seized in relation to the original charges can not go to players. Money put into a fund set up for the specific purpose of compensating players will go to players. Would you rather he took the risk and paid now, or waited until it was clear the money would go to players?

It only adds up to 231M

It's ridiculous that Barry should pay anything until it is assured that the players will get paid their money.

Thanks for the info - I thought it odd that they seemed to have enough to cover this mess. It's all still pretty wild and messy. 42M stolen, phew, I am not sure what a phantom deposit consists of (sounds a bit like 131M of very smelly stuff) or what the difference phatom is to stolen.

I would rather he followed his own advice and paid back FTP as soon as he had 400K, not "several years later".

Beyond that, in a selfish sense, I would rather he paid FTP after April 15th, because that would mean I would have had a slightly improved chance of withdrawing my money before FTP shut down completely (my second withdrawal to Moneybookers was held up for several weeks and finally finished in limbo when the company shut down).

I have said all along, that BG should escrow conditional on the deal being finalized. If the deal goes through, GBT has to pay RoW. Paying U.S. players is the DoJ's responsibility, not Barry's and not GBT's.

When I borrow money from a friend, I don't ask him what he will do with it when I pay it back. The whole notion that BG gets to decide what happens to the money he owes is loopy.

Just want my money back Don't blame BG of course...

Agreed, and I still haven't seen anything like a compelling counter-argument (although I'm not reading every post).

You'd have to be pretty close to bat**** crazy to consider escrow when the legal situation is such a cluster****. Unless you feel like carefully analyzing every word of 500-page agreements. Even then, there's a non-trivial chance you'd just be setting your money on fire and/or ending up in court.

Barryg should sit tight for now. OK, I'm done.

Barry is about as good and honest as they come in the poker world. He's got my respect.

How do you know what Barry's intent was?

To me intent is not relevant here. If I am a lender, I don't care about intent; I only care about getting paid back. Almost everyone who borrows money has at least a vague intention of paying back, unless they are a straight up con artist. So what. Someone who can't pay back because they degen their money away (e.g. Mikey) is pretty much the same in my book as someone who never had the intention of paying back.

BG has admitted in his book that he is bad at managing his money - even joking with the charity that he gave money to that he was a negative millionaire so donating money to the charity didn't make a material difference.

I'm disappointed to learn that BG has been carrying a 400k debt for several years, and also that he has had at one time 3 million in casino markers even though he is a self-admitted poor money manager.

If he continually goes into debt there will come a time when he will be unable to pay his debts no matter how honest he is - either because he's dead, destitute or mentally incompetent.

Putting all the pieces together, we ought to regard BG as a having a mild form of gambling degeneracy. Not obviously so like Mike and Layne, but a degen nonetheless.

hasnt this guy donated million to charity? Get off his balls!

Completely irrelevant.

If Barry and everybody else paid their debts sooner, wouldn't that expedite the receive of our payments from ftp?

No. Some people are insinuating that he is basically stealing from the players and he has no right to do what he is doing. He is not stealing and he has the right to do whatever he wants as long as he pays the amount back when he feels its proper and not crossing any lines. If he has donated millions to charities, he is def not stealing a small amount like 400k.

I will say guys like Ivey and co are complete and utter dirt bags. They dont even care to make public statements. They are disrespecting their fans and the game of poker. They are selfish and they disgust me and I honestly hope they get one outtered for the rest of their shady lives

I'm having trouble caring about this discussion because to me the likelihood of gamblers like Layne Flack, Mike Matusow, Barry, et. all, paying back huge debts to GBT because it's the "right" thing to do is simply nil.

Name one poster who has insinuated that BG is a thief.

Most say that he owes the money and my view is that as a borrower he has no right to dictate the terms of his repayment. I also say he should have paid back his debt years ago. Further, I say that as a self-admitted poor money manager, his tendency to run up huge debts (by his own admission) is indicative of a serious personal problem.

That's basically all.

Oh, one last thing. After the deal goes through BG will owe the money to GBT and no one else.

Only if they buy the receivables too. And that assumes this is actually officially on the books.

My understanding is that this is not a "company" sale, merely an "asset" sale. Which includes whatever they agree to buy.