Now, let’s discuss what happened after it became highly successful. government's moves against the online poker industry.In Part I, we discussed the origin of “Black Friday” and how Poker’s Black Friday had come about in 2011, including the role of Ray Bitar who had conceived the Full Tilt Poker online web site and included Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and Rafe Furst as co-founders. In June Lederer allegedly told others at Full Tilt that the company only had $6 million and Bitar worried in an internal email about a "run on the bank."įull Tilt has previously denied any wrongdoing and recently tried to explain its actions to its many irate customers, saying it had been a victim of a massive heist perpetrated by a payment processor and the U.S. government unsealed an indictment against Bitar and effectively shut down Full Tilt's U.S. operation claiming it was an illegal gambling business in April, Full Tilt's leaders realized they were facing a cash crunch but continued to accept foreign player funds while facing $300 million in liabilities. The management of Full Tilt Poker, the feds say, "operated Full Tilt Poker with the hope that only a small number of players would try to withdraw funds at any one time, and that Full Tilt Poker would regularly receive additional deposits in amounts greater than any withdrawal requests."Īccording to the proposed complaint, when the U.S.
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. Indeed, Bharara's office says 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 due to the federal government's efforts to disrupt the payment processors that facilitate the flow of funds in the online poker industry. 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. The government claims Full Tilt continued to make payments to its owners of up to $10 million per month even after the company was insolvent.
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Another owner, described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid. Jesus Ferguson allegedly was allocated $87 million in distributions and received at least $25 million, federal prosecutors claim. Specifically, the feds allege that Bitar pocketed $41 million and Lederer got $42 million.
The proposed amended complaint claims that in 20 Full Tilt sent emails to its players and posted messages on online poker message boards, assuring players that "unlike some companies in our industry, we completely understand and accept that your account money belongs to you, not Full Tilt Poker." But the new complaint claims that the company did not have enough funds to repay players and that by March 31 Full Tilt only had $60 million or so in its bank accounts while owing $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million in the U.S.įederal prosecutors claim that Full Tilt's board members got rich because the company used player funds to pay them massive amounts of money that largely was transferred to their accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations.
"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."įederal prosecutors have drawn up an amended complaint that names Bitar, Lederer, Ferguson and Furst, adding them to the original complaint which was filed seeking $3 billion from Full Tilt Poker and unrelated poker companies, PokerStars and Absolute Poker. “Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme,” Bharara said in a statement. Bharara announced the filing of a motion to amend a forfeiture and civil money laundering complaint that was filed in April, alleging that Full Tilt and board members Lederer, Ferguson and Rafael Furst, together with Full Tilt CEO Ray Bitar, defrauded poker players out of some $300 million by not maintaining funds at the company sufficient to repay players.
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