When all the information comes out, I expect a bunch of these guys to be behind bars.

I can't wait.

I don't even care about getting my money back. I had hardly any on Tilt. I am simply looking at the facts and presenting a logical case. Of course, if the DOJ's accusations turn out to be false then my argument is void. I stated as much at the beginning of the OP. I think the fact that so many people were so incredibly loyal to Full Tilt (as well as Lederer and Ferguson) is leading to them not being able to logically come to a conclusion.

OMG you are all making this way to complicated. Its not fraud to use player funds for operations - and if they had disclosed this it would be not unethical in any way as many business models borrow money from customers in one form or another.

Fraud is saying something you know not to be true when you can profit off the lie. Saying they are segregating funds when they were not is fraud at the corporate level, and when board members do it to make personal profits, its fraud at the personal level only if it can be proven they knew it was a lie. This is why Howard et all are in trouble.

In no way was this a ponzi scheme - they could have been telling everyone what they were doing and as long as cash inflows grew faster than outflows they would have been fine. They chose to lie but they did not have to.

This whole situation is very familiar to anyone who has been in business for a long time. A company grows so fast the owners feel they can get away with anything, then when the cash declines they panic and and the panic screw up, - in this case by fraud. It is probable that they would have survived if the DOJ had not cut their access to new US player funds, but when the DOJ acted (well before any of us knew) they screwed up and tried to keep the gravy train running without adjusting their business. Old story, new actors.

I have no loyalty to FTP and no balance with them when Black Friday hit, but I find it ironic that everyone is calling for heads based on the DOJ press releases. That really shows the impact of dropping a GLOBAL PONZI SCHEME headline. A lot of people are claiming that we already knew all of this, and that none of the information is new. If so, there surely is a disproportionate increase in the calling for heads and prison rapes coinciding with the DOJ release. The DOJ is not neutral in this matter--they have an emotional investment / ax to grind against the poker companies, and their press release will be worded to paint the most unfavorable picture of FTP.

Prior to BF, PokerStars and Full Tilt BOTH had delays in processing withdrawals due to the DOJ seizing accounts in 3rd party processors that was player money. The delays were a result of having to find a new processor to handle the current batch of withdrawals. BOTH sites had this problem.

Black Friday is a more complex situation and doesn't have anything to do with "eating costs." That PokerStars handled it much better doesn't make the Full Tilt decision-makers criminals.

If you look at the big picture and track how it unfolds from 2006 when the UIGEA was written, then you'd realize that the DOJ and the government are the actual scam artists in this whole circus. The DOJ stole my roll (and former hourly wage), not Howard ****ing Lederer.

ETA: I should add that Kyl, Frist, GWB, the NFL, horse racing, B&Ms Indian and Harrah's, FoF, Eric Holder, and possibly Obama stole my roll/wage.

You said they were making "so much money" they could afford to eat all these costs. And credit players for deposits they didn't have a payment processor for. All while paying their execs and shareholders w/o missing a beat. And throw in a whole bunch of loans.

And yet now they have no money. Where did it all go? The DOJ says FT only had $60M left on BF. Has FT even disputed this fact yet? No, they haven't. So I have no reason to believe it is not true.

I'm far from a fan of the UIGEA. I think I lost more from in 2006 then 90% of the poker players did on BF or whenever.

But just think, if you had only played on PS, you would have had your roll months ago. So you can't use UIGEA/DOJ as an excuse.

On the legality of Tilt's actions, bear in mind that whatever their legality under Aldernay law, this conduct may have broken several American laws, state and federal. If the federal government's facts are accurate, for instance, this could have constituted both larceny by trick and wire fraud.

I am no fan of the DOJ's actions on Black Friday. And certainly am no fan of the politicians named in earlier posts ( you also left out Harry Reid by the way) who were resonsible for the enactment or enforcement of the legislation that led to Black Friday. But, players knew of the governments position, and nevertheless chose to play on FTP (me included). And therefore, it is improper to say the government stole our money.

The DOJ has made some serious allegations against the principles involved, and would not have done so at this point in time, unless they had the goods on Lederer, Ferguson, and Furst. I'm sure they have interviewed many of the principles of FTP and those that cooperated were left out of their press release.

At this point they have not been convicted of anything yet, and should be given the opportunity to tell their side of the story...and pay back every dime they received from FTP to the players. So far the silence is deafening.

I think you are missing something here.

Banks, as I said in another thread, have a special privilege to "use" customer accounts (though even then, only for investments and loans and the like, and while strictly complying with various regulations and insuring the deposits) in their business. But when you pay your money to a non-bank who keeps it on account, there is no privilege to use the accounts. You can certainly argue that failing to segregate isn't itself a fraud, but paying moneys on deposit out to fund operations or as disbursements to the owners is quite a bit different.

Further, while I haven't reviewed all the relevant web pages, I am sure Tilt, just like every other poker site, emphasized how your money was safe on deposit. Whether or not they said anything about segregated funds (a spokesman went on 2+2 and said it, but that may not count), they certainly made general representations about how your money was safe and how they were a reliable company that you could entrust your money to.

That may very well be enough for a fraud claim to stand up. Oftentimes, fraud is judged by the ordinary expectations of consumers. Years before I became a lawyer, I successfully sued a used car dealer in small claims court, because he sold me a car that did not have the required emissions control equipment in California and thus could not be registered. I found this out a year later when I tried to renew.

He never represented to me specifically that the vehicle had a smog device; however, the transmission of the registration documents to me was held by the court to be sufficient to represent to me that the vehicle could be registered. And the judge's decision was correct under California law.

Tilt undoubtedly told players that they were safeguarding their funds, and if that was a false statement, a fraud claim may lie.

Thanks for the link.

Are you sure that a Guernsey law for companies applies to Full Tilt (which is licensed in Alderney)? It seems like for some matters Guernsey "administers" (per Wikipedia) Alderney, but Alderney also has its own parliament.

This is exactly the reason why you might want to reconsider offering me large odds on a bet. The whole concept of jurisdiction here is all ****ed up. (one of the primary reasons that online poker companies are registered in these places to begin with ... who the **** even knows what a bailiwick is?)

This question is far less trivial than you think it is.

Yea, I know it's complicated, but I'm still pretty confident that it's illegal.

As far as I can tell this shows that Alderney would be covered under this law.

From AGCC site, "Alderney, the third largest of the Channel Islands and one of the constitutive islands of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, is approximately 8 miles from France and 60 miles from mainland Britain. It has its own government, legislature and company laws and operates with the same modern banking, insurance and investment laws as Guernsey. "

You keep mixing different things that don't really have to do with each other.

FT crediting deposits without actually taking money out is a separate issue from the DOJ seizing 3rd party processor money over the past few years and FT forking out other money to make good on those withdrawal requests. They're two separate issues.

The DOJ says a lot of things. You'd be a fool to believe it all. What you are ignoring is that the site was operating as normal, and that the ONLY REASON they can't pay us back is because the DOJ came in and ****ed them bone dry. Yes, part of that is FT's fault for not being prepared like PS was, but the fact of the matter is the DOJ screwed everything up, and unless the principals of FT had some clairvoyance that the rest of the online poker industry didn't have, they're not criminals who stole our money. The money is still there, the DOJ is the giant roadblock between it and us.

You are missing the point. The sites did not create this mess. The government did. This current drama is just an extension of a bigger mission to clear out a multi-billion-dollar industry for American companies to swoop in and control when legislation calls for it. Legislation lobbied for by the same greedy ****s who lobbied for the UIGEA in the first place.

And I never kept my entire roll on PS or FT. I kept min rolls for my stakes and cashed out as often as possible. I could care less if I never see my Full Tilt money again. Aside from the fact that it sucks games aren't supremo soft anymore, I'm more angry at the principle of the matter. We as players are getting ****ed by a government run by corporations and lobbyists writing laws to favor them and not giving a **** what happens to us. The DOJ cares not about "securing our ports" but about whatever their puppet masters tell them to do. I don't have a problem with them prosecuting violators of the law, but the way everything has unfolded over the past ten years is just a stinking boatload of bull**** and a waste of our taxpayer money. Period.

I expect FT and PS to do their best to make money with the best product for its players. What I don't expect is the DOJ to **** me where they should protect me just because a bunch of people/entities far wealthier than I doesn't like that FT and PS are doing their best to make money with the best product for their players.

Reminded me of a line from The Godfather.

Yea, sure I believe everything you said about the UIGEA, the DOJ, CET, bla, bla, bla.

But it doesn't change the one simple truth: PS paid, FTP rolled.

this sums up my thoughts pretty well. teflon for prez! and gtfo of our lives, eric holder and preet. f*kn snakes.

Actually, silence is what every single attorney worth her/his salt would call for.

To me, the statement(s) that involved persons have made, and in one particular case continue to make, are stunning.

1. Teflon's argument only works if you assume that offshore unregulated online poker was this perfectly legal enterprise that caused no issues whatsoever for US law enforcement.

Another way of looking at it is that Congress laid down a marker (the UIGEA) for what online gaming sites could and could not do, causing many sites to leave the US. This created a huge opportunity for a site, like Tilt, that was willing to take the risk. The DOJ then fought Tilt by going after payment processors, and Tilt responded by miscoding transactions. The DOJ then indicted Tilt, in part, for miscoding transactions, and seized assets, and discovered at that point that unlike Stars, Tilt was not fully capitalized and was disbursing player funds to its owners. So the DOJ sued.

Put that way, Teflon's story seems incorrect.

2. People should assume that US law governs Tilt's relationship with its players. There is no chance that any American court would refuse to apply it.

Would you mind sharing how Pokerstars "handled it much better"? The only way that I can see they handled it better is that they weren't criminals. They didn't spend more money than they had, which is why they had everybody's money. No matter what the DOJ says, the fact is that Pokerstars paid and Full Tilt didn't. I don't understand how Pokerstars was able to do this under the exact same circumstances as Full Tilt. I would really like an explanation that doesn't include anything illegal.

I haven't read through the whole thread after my post to see if anyone else responded to this, but I would just point out that the use of the word 'dividend' here may be misleading. What I outlined would not be legal in a publicly traded company. That's the type of company that pays dividends. In this case, the payments are not 'dividends'. They could simply be salary.

I was prompted to post this after reading a post by callipygian who outlined this scenario. I personally do not doubt for a second that there is a way to structure a private company in the US in such a way that massive amounts of money can be taken out of the company, money that is paid into the company for 'services' provided to 'clients' who do not read the customer agreement.

No special structure is needed. Dividends are not limited to public companies. They can be paid by all corporations if conditions permit. Salaries are paid by corporations but LLC's can not pay salaries to active owners. The source of the funds, whether by service fees or bank loans or sale of furniture, is irrelevant to the taxability of any funds withdrawn.

Money taken out of a CORPORATION is usually a salary (taxable), a dividend (taxable) or a loan repayment (not taxable except for interest). Money taken out of an LLC or a partnership by an active "member" or partner is not taxable. Partners are taxed on their share of the net income, not on their draws.

See post #25 for more on this.

People keep repeating this, but in spending some time researching this issue I can't find any actual justification for the comment. Here is an interesting very pertinent wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_...sis_Leadership

This all seems to be a textbook example of a smoldering crisis. Quoting that article, "Smoldering crises ... begin as minor internal issues that, due to manager’s negligence, develop to crisis status. These are situations when leaders are blamed for the crisis and its subsequent effect on the institution in question."

Going over companies that have successfully overcome crisis the recurring thing you see is communication, communication, communication. They are completely honest, open and work to solve the problem. From Full Tilt we've seen lies followed by more lies followed silence followed by some desperate attempt of trying to blame everybody else. This will all probably go down as a textbook example of exactly how NOT to manage a crisis.

You clearly do not understand the nuance of the situation. Your view of "PS paid and FT didn't" is just faulty logic that the entire public and ignorant poker players will use based off the WSJ article and their bank accounts, respectively. Yes, FT ****ed up and PS didn't. No, FT did not steal our money. The simple answer is to understand that if the DOJ didn't come in and wrecking ball the company, then FT would still be operating today, and this is even in spite of the deposits they'd been accepting without actually clearing.

Bolded is key, because it is not that way. And lol your first sentence. We've been down this road before. You absolutely cannot reasonably think that the DOJ is operating in the fashion you like to always claim based on the history of what's going on now and has happened in the past. There are strings being pulled, and it should be obvious to anyone who looks into the history of the UIGEA, processor seizures, BF, and the people who lobbied for and wrote the UIGEA.

There is also no way, logically speaking, that the law was operating in the interest of governing FT's relationship with its constituents. If anything, it hurt its constituents more than it helped IMO.

I love how PS didn't do anything illegal, but FT did just because everyone's mad they haven't got their rolls back. Nevermind anything the DOJ and writers/lobbiers of the UIGEA did...You do realize PS alledgedly committed bank fraud and money laundering too, right?

Anyways, there are two possibilities:

1) PokerStars and Full Tilt were regulated by different entities, and had different requirements regarding segregation of player funds. PokerStars' regulatory body seems to be the stricter of the two and survived BF as a result. Either Full Tilt did not follow their particular regulations and didn't survive BF, or they did follow regulations and didn't survive BF.

2) PokerStars and Full Tilt both got massively assaulted by the DOJ, and because PokerStars' US player base is only 50% vs. Full Tilt's 75% US player base with nosebleed stakes, more high stakes pros, and thus much larger account balances, Full Tilt simply did not have enough money to pay out all the US players while Stars did. Basically, PokerStars potentially could've been in the same exact situation as Full Tilt if it had owed as much money to its players as Full Tilt did regardless of these so-called regulatory requirements.

If you look at PokerScout, it's almost as if PokerStars is back to normal pre-BF operation, as their player traffic is only down 18% on the year compared to Full Tilt and Cereus down 100% and 97%, respectively. That tells me that a much smaller chunk of their operations was cut into regardless of what you believe about the segregation of player funds issue.

Alas we can't know the truth since we don't have proof but either way they handled it better. That doesn't make the decision-makers at Full Tilt criminals.

OP has been updated with real numbers and citations. It clearly shows that the Full Tilt Board members are guilty of criminal offenses. (Assuming DOJ allegations are true.)



Teflon, you may be right that Full Tilt would still be operating if it was not for the DOJ's interference. That does not mean that it is all the DOJ's fault. Bernie Maddoff would still be operating if were not for government interference. It does not change the fact that both Maddoff and Tilt were engaging in criminal activity.

That wikipedia page looks like it was written by a PR firm for a damage control handbook.

From your link:

"Erika Hayes James, an organizational psychologist at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business..." (emphasis mine - sba)

Go find some input from an attorney on what a company should do when they're accused of crimes.

If you can find a source stating its wise for companies to remain silent when a public crisis emerges putting hundreds of millions of dollars of their customers' money at stake, feel free to share it. I don't think that source exists. I did a fair amount of research and certainly found nothing of the like. The wiki page summarizes well the many other sources I read with similar guidelines on crisis management.

Stop right there.

It's a FACT. Forget the rest of the argument. What I stated is 100% factual.

You are trying to make some kind of convoluted reason why. But that doesn't change the facts.

Now as far as your "why" arguments, please examine the 5/30 Official Update for US players released by FTP.

Well, if their biggest priority was getting US players paid and their business was healthy, and they weren't bankrupt, why haven't the US players been paid a single penny?

I don't want to hear about any payment process issues, because FTP has and is going to continue to cover those losses. So I really don't care whether the DOJ froze $60M on BF or $600M.

That is between FTP and the DOJ. It has nothing to do with player funds.