Subject:Poker: DOJ’s Civil Complaint Amended, Alleges FTP Stole Player Funds

[spiderlegz]

Now this is interesting.

"The US Department of Justice has amended its Black Friday civil complain to include discussion of alleged “Full Tilt Poker’s and the FTP insider defendants’ theft of player funds.” The new complaint adds three new defendants, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst. It also alleges that these new defendents together with Ray Bitar committed money laundering, and asks for penalties ranging from $12M for Furst to $42M for Lederer".

And much more
http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/09/ftp-civil-amended/

More links

Forbes: Feds Call Full Tilt Poker A Massive Ponzi Scheme http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanva...-ponzi-scheme/

WSJ: U.S. Alleges Full Tilt Poker Was Ponzi Scheme http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...EFTTopWhatNews

Edit: Actually Ponzi Scheme is not a correct term for FTP

[tat00]

wow DOJ has the balls to go after JESUS lol

[spiderlegz]

The amended complaint can be viewed here for example if you dont want to go trough S:P http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/2...09-20-2011.pdf Starts on page 63.

Quite a facepalm that they have listed Pocket Kings (FTP) accounts as belonging to AP

Durrr has also answered quite a lot of questions at 2+2, also got a lot of heat (mostly by donks). Said he would do some interviews shortly.

[jstrike]

Oh, I'd say Ponzi is exactly the right word for it...a ponzi is anything where investors are paid back out of incoming investment. For a poker site to not hold the full cash value of its players' funds in some kind of assets is definitely a ponzi scheme. For them to then take money out of the till and claim it as earnings is morally repugnant, criminal and absurd.

This isn't to say that there aren't some instances where future profits can be projected and used as a basis for (wise) investment of a safe percentage of capital, but those would still be assets held by the company that could be liquidated in case of an emergency. Such as the sudden shutting-down of the company's largest poker market or the revocation of their license...

I don't know, but I been told... in a perfectly functioning poker site you might actually end up holding around 70% of initial deposits. Frankly I'm not sure how that works, since our site's only given money away on poker and never seen a dime out of it. But assuming that's true, it's interesting to look at the numbers:

FTP had $59,579,413 in bank accounts out of $390,695,788 in player funds. That's 15.24%. My guess (and take this for the pure speculation it is) would be that some genius accountant decided to take the 70% they could eventually hope to earn with a near-perfect level of churn, and then did it again the next year.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmo...ll-tilt-ponzi/

[4 of a kind]

Not sure why most don't realize that online casinos have the same freedom to do whatever they damn well please, whenever they damn well feel like it. If it wasn't for the U.S. Department of Justice exposing this, all these people involved including the scumbag pros that were named would still be loading their bank accounts.

Personally I hope most of you affiliates that promote and feed the players to these sharks will start to stand up for what needs to be done "Regulation" and stop being only concerned about lining your own pockets. For the players that keep standing up for the casinos, wake up and realize they to can do shit like this with the blink of an eye, and no one is going to stop them.



This quote from one of those articles resonates well with my beliefs:


If poker sites were legal and regulated, we could trust the regulator — an arm of the US government — to protect gamblers’ funds. Casinos are strictly regulated; online poker sites should be as well. Instead, they became international fugitives,

[jstrike]

4 of a kind, I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but the problem is that money corrupts. If J.C. Himself was in charge of regulating online gaming, he'd have a hard time stopping Judas from robbing Luke. Especially if Judas was a member of the House of Representatives. You give anybody the power to regulate gaming worldwide, or nationwide, and you get what you got in the US, which is State Gaming in the form of lotteries, plus a handful of very powerful interests that can buy senators and congressmen to make sure they're the only ones who have a lock on the market, then buy out whoever they need in the regional gaming commissions and destroy anybody that tries to compete with them. Once the field's clear, the bullies get away with murder. When was the last time you saw the DOJ release the sum total on Harrah's bank accounts, or Wynn's or Bally's? Don't forget, those accounts are in the States, where DOJ actually has territorial jurisdiction.

FTP was licensed. In Alderney, Kahnawake and more interestingly in France, which just introduced what was billed as an extremely tough auditing and licensing regime, and handed over the keys to ARJEL which is essentially complicit in all of this. Vegas understood this when they stood pat on UIGEA and let the online companies go up in flames, just so they could have a clean playing field once the online market was "regulated." In this case, "regulated" means they own it, and regulation means creating a crooked BS state-run bureaucracy that they control, that screws over anyone who doesn't pay under the table.

It's true that without DOJ this case might not've been cracked for awhile to come, but it surely would've been noticed sooner or later, and I'm sure a few heads will roll over this one in their licensing jurisdictions. The point is, they were supposedly regulated by what were supposedly independent and fair jurisdictions, and this just proves regulation ain't worth squat without public disclosure. There's no reason to think that US congressmen are gonna act any better than anyone else who's handed a suitcase of cash and told to shut up.

The only solution or way out of this, that I see, is for governments to get out and for crowd-sourced bodies (like the CM board) to become independent auditors. It doesn't take the force of law to shut down a crooked casino, all it takes is public outrage. The point I agree with most is that players shouldn't boost casinos. They need to demand disclosure, demand to see the books. I'm sure I'm gonna get heat for saying that, but frankly the only people in the industry who benefit from government regulation are the crooks anyway. So if the industry doesn't regulate itself, it's curtains for the ones who are actually honest, because by definition if you're honest, you don't pay bribes to drive your competition out of business.

[jetset]

This new twist in the evolving Full Tilt story is certainly getting massive media coverage following its first exposure yesterday, and I guess that depending on your half full or half empty tendencies it could be viewed as added momentum for the legalisation of online poker, or an indication that it should continue to be classed by governments as "undesirable".

IMO it will also be seen as another blow against the licensing jurisdictions that were supposedly overseeing this operation, and in particular the lack of an enforced ring-fencing requirement on player funds.

Alderney is taking a beating on this one, and their insistence on the current hearing remaining "in camera" is not helping it.

Edited to add that just before this story broke, the AGA came out in strong support for legalised online poker in a lengthy statement and a Youtube vid, calling on Congress to pass the necessary legislation.

[jetset]

Looking at the wider picture here, and FTP's business conduct notwithstanding, recent developments in the US do tend to create the impression that the competition is being swept out of the way for a cosy arrangement in which online poker will be legalised and packaged out to the "right" sort of probably American companies. That's my growing perception.

[maxd]

... a cosy arrangement in which online poker will be legalised and packaged out to the "right" sort of probably American companies.

That would be the other shoe dropping re: the UIGEA, IMO.

[pokeraddict]

The one thing I keep trying to dig up is what went on with AGCC the last 2 days? Weren't they having the FTP hearings? Is anyone else suspicious about the timing of the amended indictment?

I like how the complaint mentions 2+2 as "Poker Forum" and mentions FTPDoug's threads and discussions. It seems every poker scandal always finds a way to involve 2+2.