The online poker community have been eagerly awaiting news emanating from the meeting between the Alderney Gambling Control Commission and representatives of Full Tilt Poker that has been taking place in London this week, but instead of a press release from either party it was the US Department of Justice who provided even more drama.
News spread like wildfire that the US Department of Justice had filed a motion to amend the civil complaint from April so that they can add further allegations against Full Tilt Poker that they had defrauded customers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In the amended document Howard Lederer, Rafe Furst and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson are all named as people who have benefited from the fraudulent activity.
The US Department of Justice also revealed that Full Tilt Poker purposely mislead its customers into believing their money was held in segregated accounts, but alas it was not. US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release that accompanied the motion to amend the civil complaint that, “Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme.”
The same press release alleges that between April 2007 and April 2011 the Full Tilt Poker and its board distributed close to $444 million to the Board members and its owners, of which Ray Bitar received around $41 million, Lederer $42 million, Ferguson at least $25 million (though he was allocated nearly $87.5 million) and Furst about $11.7m. Amazingly, payments to the board and owners only stopped after “Black Friday.”
Furthermore, also in the press release the Department of Justice claim that liabilities to players around the world topped the scales at $300,000,000 but the company only had between $5-6 million on hand in June 2011 and probably has even less now.
This is a massive blow to Full Tilt Poker and even more so to the players who still have money locked up on the site. We cannot speculate on the possible implications and outcomes of this latest development but it now looks highly unlikely that you will publicly see any of the above names in major poker tournaments ever again nor will Full Tilt Poker be able to ever recover.
