Full Tilt Poker

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 11:27 am

This really is an amazing story and shows the greed of the human race. When the hell did we ever become so corrupt? This is just amazing.

http://espn.go.com/poker/story/_/id/699 ... -complaint

By Andrew Feldman
ESPN.com

The online poker world in the United States was brought to a halt in April as PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker were charged with bank fraud, illegal gambling offenses and money laundering. On Tuesday, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney has motioned to amend the forfeiture and civil money laundering complaint to highlight that Full Tilt Poker and its board of directors operated the company as a "massive Ponzi scheme".

The amended complaint explains that while FTP maintained player funds were safe, the company never actually had the represented cash on hand as a result of crediting users' deposits without actually receiving the money. There was a shortfall of approximately $130 million as a result of that process.

The complaint further states that as of March 31, FTP owed players around the world $390 million, but only had $59 million on hand.

"As the proposed amended complaint describes in detail, Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "As a result of our enforcement actions this alleged self-dealing scheme came to light. Not only did the firm orchestrate a massive fraud against the U.S. banking system, as previously alleged, Full Tilt also cheated and abused its own players to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. As described, Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited with the company."

Additionally, the complaint assesses that the company used player funds to pay board members and other owners more than $440 million.

In addition to Ray Bitar, who was named in the initial complaint, three high-profile players were also named as board members in the DOJ's press release: Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafael "Rafe" Furst. According the U.S. Attorney's Office, they've "restrained five accounts associated with those individuals."

The complaint also maintains that the aforementioned board members are liable to the government "in an amount that is no less than $40,954,781.53 for Bitar; $41,856,010.92 million for Lederer; $25 million for Ferguson; and $11,706,323.96 million for Furst."

In total, the four board members and estimated 19 additional owners of Tiltware, LLC received $443 million in distributions since April 2007.

The Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended Full Tilt Poker's license in June and a hearing was held Sept. 19 and 20 to discuss a possible reinstatement. Since that time, there has been no activity on the online poker site.

Full Tilt Poker was previously a sponsor of poker programming on ESPN.

Andrew Feldman is the poker editor for ESPN.com. Gary Wise contributed to this report.

Follow Andrew Feldman on Twitter: @espn_poker

joetreff · Post by **joetreff** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 10:37 am

http://www.rakeback.com/full-tilt-poker ... &utm_sourc e=Emailvision

That's Tom (Durr) Dwan's response. It's interesting.

It wasn't a Ponzi scheme, FT was legitimately making 10's of millions per year. It was a huge hole that they decided to keep quiet on instead of fixing, and then Black Friday happened all at once.

Feel free to put me in a 160 million hole if you give me 50 million a year in income...But take away the income and make my business illegal, I'm in trouble...

So it was a bunch of supposedly bright people (Lederer and Ferguson among them, both math geniuses) getting themselves in a huge hole to begin with, and then getting their income taken away. Getting yourself in the hole when you have that much income is pure stupidity. If then they took even more money for themselves then we can be sure they are complete criminals...

They were each making over a mil a year at poker, and millions at FTP legitimately so it's really hard to imagine them intentionally stealing...

[ September 21, 2011, 05:05 PM: Message edited by: felixflamingo ]

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 6:43 am

Obviously what FTP did was morally wrong.

Nevertheless, I am confused about one thing. The DOJ has stated that online poker is illegal. Yet they are now filing a civil complaint. Can you have it both ways? If my local bookie doesn't pay, I cannot sue the bookie in my local state courthouse for breach of contract or misappropriating my funds. Just don't get that.

Diesel · Post by **Diesel** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 7:52 am

Would it really surprise you if I told you that online sites had scores of poker players on payroll, that 1-were great at math, 2-excellent poker players, 3-on the website's payroll to win and keep monies "in house", and finally 4-they were able to see EVERYONE'S hands, while of course you were only able to see your cards...?

This was a ticking timebomb for a long time.

joetreff · Post by **joetreff** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 9:49 am

Originally posted by Diesel:
Would it really surprise you if I told you that online sites had scores of poker players on payroll, that 1-were great at math, 2-excellent poker players, 3-on the website's payroll to win and keep monies "in house", and finally 4-they were able to see EVERYONE'S hands, while of course you were only able to see your cards...?

This was a ticking timebomb for a long time. Yes it would surprise me. If you can show any example of that I will personally triple your money back.

That's just a well repeated conspiracy theory perpetuated by the Absolute scandal, that guy was caught and he was not on the Absolute payroll...there has been billions of online poker hands dealt in the last 10 years and not one other person has been shown to have seen the other people's hole cards.

If they were great at math and excellent players they wouldn't work for anyone.
If they could see hole cards then certain plays would be transparent (which is how the Absolute guy got caught)

joetreff · Post by **joetreff** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:18 am

Originally posted by Trust In Bill:
Obviously what FTP did was morally wrong.

Nevertheless, I am confused about one thing. The DOJ has stated that online poker is illegal. Yet they are now filing a civil complaint. Can you have it both ways? If my local bookie doesn't pay, I cannot sue the bookie in my local state courthouse for breach of contract or misappropriating my funds. Just don't get that. Don't know if this helps but online poker isn't illegal. There are thousands of hands being played right now...their freezing of funds and lawsuits are for money laundering. Not poker playing or poker dealing.

Most of the sites were using US banks to process payments, setting up accounts under fake names like ABC Golf Inc. and telling the banks they sell Golf clubs...Lying to the bank is a felony because processing payments for offshore gambling is illegal and they were tricking them into doing that.

Their civil suit is for money laundering I would think.

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:32 am

The DOJ stated in its original criminal complaint that online poker itself for money (not for free, or under sweepstakes rules such as WPT's site), not just payments for online poker, are illegal. It is my understanding that one of the partial defenses that Pokerstars would offer at trial is that poker is a game of skill and is legal. Fortunately, they wrote a fantasy sports exception into the Kyl bill, or we would all be a little antsy.

Erok · Post by **Erok** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 5:51 pm

These big investment banks/firms that have essentially been responsible for the current financial mess, are now dipping into the sports betting/poker realm.

Cantor Fitzgerald and Goldman Sachs to my knowledge.