12 replies to this topic

[solderz]

Story LinkNEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused executives at the online site Full Tilt Poker of operating a Ponzi scheme, siphoning more than $440 million in gamblers' winnings to board members and owners.The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York also charged poker celebrities Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson of taking part in and profiting from the scams.According to the complaint from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Full Tilt Poker and its board, including Lederer and Ferguson, "defrauded players by misrepresenting that their funds on deposit in online gambling accounts were safe, secure, and available for withdrawal at any time.""In reality, Full Tilt Poker did not maintain funds sufficient to repay all players, and in addition, the company used player funds to pay board members and other owners more than $440 million since April 2007," the complaint read.The prosecutor is seeking money laundering penalties against the poker champs and is also seeking the forfeiture of money gained from the alleged scheme. The original complaint from April charged board member Raymond Bitar and 10 other defendants with bank fraud, illegal gambling and money laundering offenses."Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme," said Bharara, in a press release. "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."ARTICLE CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE

[solderz]

FTP Attorney Replies(Reuters) - A lawyer for Full Tilt Poker rejected on Wednesday allegations made by federal prosecutors that the company and its board of directors operated the company as a global Ponzi scheme."I disagree strongly with the allegation that FTP operated as a global Ponzi scheme," said Jeff Ifrah, an attorney based in Washington. "FTP may have made mistakes, but I have seen no evidence to support the DOJ's characterization of it as a global Ponzi scheme."U.S. prosecutors announced new allegations on Tuesday in its probe of the Full Tilt Poker website, accusing the company of paying its directors more than $440 million while defrauding its players.Full Tilt was first charged in April along with two other Internet poker companies.The case is USA v Pokerstars, et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-02654.So it wasn't a ponzi scheme. It was just a company that took funds which should have been held in trust for each individual player that deposited them, and used those funds to pay off earlier players. Not a ponzi scheme at all.

[solderz]

Story LinkFull Tilt Poker 'Ponzi scheme' woes spread to IrelandFull Tilt Poker: This week, prosecutors in New York alleged that Full Tilt was not a legitimate company but a global Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of online players of hundreds of millions of dollars.By Reuters / September 22, 2011DUBLINCherrywood Business Park, on the outskirts of Dublin, is no Las Vegas.But here, amidst the neat concrete-and-glass office buildings, the Subway fast-food outlet and the Spar convenience store, a multi-lingual team of 550 people helped run one of the world's largest onlinepoker sites, Full Tilt Poker.This week, prosecutors in New York alleged that Full Tilt was not a legitimate company but a global Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of online players of hundreds of millions of dollars.A check of the Full Tilt website says that its system is currently down.Back in Cherrywood, nearly half the employees of Pocket Kings, which operates the IT, customer services and marketing for Full Tilt, are set to lose their jobs and many of them surf the web for clues about what will happen next."At the moment we just sit here and do nothing all day, just reading news from poker websites and message boards. For three months, we are doing nothing," said one French employee, speaking to Reuters on his lunch break on Wednesday.CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE

[Partytime]

Sounds to me like jesus and howard could end up in the slammer?

[BaseJester]

Considering the license to print money that is legitimate rake on an online game, why?

[AmScray]

BaseJester, on Sunday, September 25th, 2011, 7:32 PM, said:

Considering the license to print money that is legitimate rake on an online game, why?

Uh, greed?If you have a business making millions but you can steal hundreds of millions, is it any shock that it happens?The funniest part about this whole disaster isn't how it went down. It isn't even all the people who warned about unregulated online poker being a potential nightmare for the players- before UB/AP, after UB/AP and now- but were shouted down by retards who wanted to believe that Santa Claus was watching the show, keeping everything well... The funniest thing here is that the old scumbags who've always made up the high levels of the poker world pulled off their biggest grift, and no one even realizes it. When a bunch of pie-eyed college kids stumbled out of the suburbs and into the world of poker- replete with full faith in humanity, oodles of "trust in their fellow man" and full bank accounts- those old dirtbags salivated like when a drunk businessman sits down at the 50/100 stud table. A few of them figured out a way to shear all the sheep at once, no different than the old schemes they used to run at the Dunes card room in the 1970's, only on a much grander scale. The figureheads are what they are, but you can bet your ass those roots run MUCH deeper into the 'old school poker community'. Lots of fingers in that pie. The poker world has always been made up of con-men and grifters. Their greatest con was polishing their image and leading all these dumb motherfuckers to believe that they were somehow a 'respectable group of game playing mathematicians' rather than the garden variety bunko artists that they always have been.

[solderz]

Wall Street Journal Story Link

Quote

Thousands of people around the world allegedly lost money at the hands of Full Tilt Poker, an online poker site the government said last week was a massive Ponzi scheme.But Adam Levy, a 26-year-old New Yorker, says he is one of scores of poker players who unwittingly benefited from the alleged scheme.EarlierMr. Levy says he tried to transfer $150 to Full Tilt in December to finance his online poker bets. He quickly won $9,000 in two poker tournaments and soon cashed out $7,500, but he says he later was surprised to discover that the original $150 was never debited from his bank account."I was never intending to defraud the site," Mr. Levy says. "I always thought that eventually they were going to take the money, and I made sure there was money in my bank account for that purpose. It just never happened."Mr. Levy's experience raises a key question in the Full Tilt case: how did the company get to the point of paying out winnings to customers when it wasn't collecting money from them in the first place?ARTICLE CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE

That is awesome. Paying out $7,500 in winnings and never collecting the initial deposit. The level of incompetence boggles the mind.

[solderz]

Forbes Story Link

Quote

Full Tilt Poker Fraud: How FTP Threw Egg on the Poker FaceJoelle Scott Joelle Scott, Contributor Is anyone remotely surprised that the owners of Full Tilt Poker were running a scam? When your management team is comprised of “Jesus” and “The Professor” and your clientele has been known to dip between the successful and intelligent to the desperate and degenerate, you can’t help but wonder why this comes as news that Full Tilt Poker and other well-known online gambling sites were screwing the system, and possibly their clients.Chris Ferguson at the 2007 World Series of PokerWell, the surprise is this: every industry has its own implicit “code” no matter whether you operate in technology, machinery, gambling or stocks (what’s the difference between these two, again?). Hell, even organized crime families have a code. And, by breaking the code, the executives of Full Tilt Poker (FTP), Raymond Bitar, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, broke the trust of their community, not unlike Madoff. That is not to say Jesus and the Professor (as Ferguson and Lederer are known) did orchestrate a “global Ponzi scheme” (as alleged by the Department of Justice), but they did defraud their customers and used customer monies for their own personal gain. ARTICLE CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE

[TOTTENHAMKID]

One thing says it all about those two clowns: you haven't seen them at all since Black Friday! Are they even alive? Not a clue anywhere, where's CSI Las Vegas? No live tourneys, no interviews, nuthin. What the hell happened to Ivey as well, was he a silent partner? Probably all were supporters of the progressive regime currently in charge, there are pics of them with the marxist in charge.

[SCYUKON]

I suppose this may be piling on, but does anyone finally think that maybe the "random hand generators" were maybe not so random after all? I mean to say this in the past meant instaflaming (and maybe it still does), but in particular I wondered about the following:The rebuy hours in rebuy tournaments - worst hand almost always seemed to win when getting it in preflop - not a bad scheme for building the number of buyins.How about letting new players to the site have an early win (or extreme run of good cards to go deep) to make them think they had some skillz, only to eventually find out they did not - kind of like the bird beating his head against the wall for a pellet.And we already know about the superuser accounts......My guess, dirty on many more levels than we will ever know, but sure would be interesting to find out. I just hope Bub and Jesus don't drop the soap in the shower.....

[LongLiveYorke]

And maybe Tritz really did see those hands before the flop...

[tattoo_tearz]

solderz, on Tuesday, September 20th, 2011, 12:24 PM, said:

Story LinkNEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused executives at the online site Full Tilt Poker of operating a Ponzi scheme, siphoning more than $440 million in gamblers' winnings to board members and owners.The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York also charged poker celebrities Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson of taking part in and profiting from the scams.According to the complaint from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Full Tilt Poker and its board, including Lederer and Ferguson, "defrauded players by misrepresenting that their funds on deposit in online gambling accounts were safe, secure, and available for withdrawal at any time.""In reality, Full Tilt Poker did not maintain funds sufficient to repay all players, and in addition, the company used player funds to pay board members and other owners more than $440 million since April 2007," the complaint read.The prosecutor is seeking money laundering penalties against the poker champs and is also seeking the forfeiture of money gained from the alleged scheme. The original complaint from April charged board member Raymond Bitar and 10 other defendants with bank fraud, illegal gambling and money laundering offenses."Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme," said Bharara, in a press release. "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."ARTICLE CONTINUED AT LINK ABOVE

So is internet poker safe or are we all being scammed by computers? Lol i know thats what my wife thinks - i try to tell her i just suck at poker but she insists im being scammed lol

[tattoo_tearz]

So is internet poker safe or are we all being scammed by computers? Lol i know thats what my wife thinks - i try to tell her i just suck at poker but she insists im being scammed lol