Feds allege Full Tilt Poker was a ponzi scheme

**msuduster** · 09-20-2011 01:59 PM

I've seen estimates of $300 million in the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt from Alexandra Berzon of the WSJ
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The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday accused poker celebrities Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson among other executives of a major poker website of defrauding poker players out of more than $300 million.

...

The distributions to the owners, including Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Lederer, continued even as funds to pay out creditors—the poker players—dwindled because government investigators had made it increasingly impossible to move player money into company-affiliated bank accounts, the government says.

"Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme," said Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, in a statement.
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Um, you don't have to be a legal eagle to know this is serious news. Basically they're looking to nail Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and 2 FTP executives with Bernie Madoff-esque penalties.

**msuduster** · 09-20-2011 02:25 PM

Excerpt from Nathan Vardi of Forbes
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U.S. government lawyers believe that Full Tilt Poker started to face a growing cash crunch in 2010 because it could not collect funds from U.S. players due to the federal government’s efforts to disrupt the payment processors that facilitate the flow of funds in the online poker industry. Indeed, Bharara’s office believes that by August 2010 Full Tilt’s payment processing network had been severely disrupted and that the company could no longer withdraw money from U.S. players’ bank accounts. So instead, the feds claim, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits, letting players make online poker bets with $130 million of “phantom funds” that resulted in a massive shortfall when other players won the bogus money in poker games.
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It appears the mystery of why it took so long to receive our checks has been answered. They had to wait for other people to pay them before they could pay us. How sad.

If you are owed money / have money trapped on FTP, it may take months or years before you see it.

**ravensfan929** · 09-20-2011 03:09 PM

Its crazy to think we could see Lederer and Ferguson end up in jail but ponzi schemes are serious and it kind of looks like thats what this was so they could be in alot of trouble.

**passiveharry** · 09-21-2011 12:22 PM

@ravensfan929 it may go even deeper than that. Remember that Doyle Brunson and his site was shut down as well. We have all heard the stories through the grapevine that Doyle did in fact own his site. Also, there are a lot of other FTP pros who supposedly owned pieces. Clonie Gowan even sued FT to claim her percentage of ownership. Wonder how that is working for her now? You think Tom Dwan, Antonius and Hansen are worried now?

**ravensfan929** · 09-21-2011 03:04 PM

Originally Posted by passiveharry

@ravensfan929 it may go even deeper than that. Remember that Doyle Brunson and his site was shut down as well. We have all heard the stories through the grapevine that Doyle did in fact own his site. Also, there are a lot of other FTP pros who supposedly owned pieces. Clonie Gowan even sued FT to claim her percentage of ownership. Wonder how that is working for her now? You think Tom Dwan, Antonius and Hansen are worried now?

Oh i didnt know that Doylesroom was shut down. Its gonna be interesting to see what happens to all these pros who were involved in other aspects of the sites other than just being a player on there. So what about Ivey? Did he own any part of the site? He was probably their biggest player on there so its kind of hard to imagine that he didnt but from all the stuff i read about him i dont recall seeing anything about him owning a percentage of it.

**msuduster** · 09-22-2011 08:09 PM

Some members of Team Full Tilt have started to open up about what happened. Tom Dwan has done a series of interviews and Gus Hansen recently gave an interview to a Danish website.

Here's Dwan's interview with Fox News Business

**ravensfan929** · 09-28-2011 02:21 PM

Did i misunderstand what he said or did he just say 2 completely different things to the same question? Im trying to re watch the video but my connection is bad so i gave up lol. But when asked if he lost money because of this im pretty sure he said "i just recently busted my bankroll" then later on when asked he said "if he isnt able to get his money out of his account then he will owe alot". If he busted his bankroll then how does he have money in his account? Maybe i heard it wrong cuz of the connection.

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