Over six months after taking on the task, the federal government appears to be ready to start paying off players who had their money locked up on the “old” Full Tilt Poker in 2011.
The U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, announced on Wednesday that the federal government will employ the Garden City Group to serve as the claims administrator in the Full Tilt case. “The Garden City Group brings a track record of handling the administration of some of the country’s largest and most complicated settlements,” Bharara stated during the announcement. “With their selection, we take a significant step forward in the process of compensating victims of the Full Tilt Poker scheme.”
In addition to naming a claims administrator for the Full Tilt situation, Bharara declared that Garden City Group will begin to process “victim” claims shortly. In reaching that end, Garden City Group has set up an official website, www.fulltiltpokerclaims.com, as well as a toll-free phone number (866) 250-2640) where information on refunds can also be found. A look at the dedicated website currently only provides a summary of Wednesday’s actions by the SDNY’s offices, a registration address for further information on the claims process, and a “Contact Us” tab that provides the above information as well as a physical address (a P. O. Box) that snail mail can be sent to.
Garden City Group was chosen to be the claims administrator for the Full Tilt case because of its success in other claims litigation cases. GCG handled such diverse cases as the WorldCom Securities litigation (which totaled over $6 billion in settlements) and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (an ongoing settlement). Garden City Group will potentially have their work cut out for them with the Full Tilt case.
After the “Black Friday” indictments of 2011, the three main targets of the U. S. DoJ lawsuit – PokerStars, the CEREUS Network rooms Absolute Poker and UB.com and Full Tilt – were unable to provide online poker to American citizens. Fairly quickly after the indictments were announced, PokerStars made American players whole for their accounts on the site through an agreement with the DoJ. When offered the same opportunity, it became known how dire the situation was with Full Tilt Poker and the CEREUS Network.
Faced with having to pay back an estimated $200 million to U. S. players, it was revealed that Full Tilt did not have the funds available to make those payments. The Department of Justice alleged that the ownership behind Full Tilt instead used player money to pay dividends to shareholders in the company. This led to the eventual revocation of the license of the “old” Full Tilt Poker in late 2011 and its shutdown until November of last year after it was bought by PokerStars in a negotiated settlement with the DoJ.
The issues regarding the dividend payments to shareholders brought about civil charges in September 2011 against three Full Tilt board members, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst, alleging they ran a “Ponzi scheme” to defraud players. Although they attempted to fight the allegations, the trio have now settled their cases out of court (for millions of dollars), money that will be added into that which has already been seized by the U. S. government to pay back U. S. players (international players have already been paid back by PokerStars after the purchase of Full Tilt in July of last year).
The process for players to get their funds back into their bank accounts (or, better yet, their poker bankroll) might be a wearisome task. Former U. S. Full Tilt players will have to file a “Petition for Remission” with Garden City Group, a task that will be more difficult as those players may not accurately know what they had in their accounts at the time of Full Tilt’s shutdown. Garden City Group will review the petition and more than likely seek accurate documentation of the amount a player is requesting before releasing any funds.
With the establishment of a claims administrator for Americans looking for their Full Tilt money, the sordid saga regarding the “old” Full Tilt Poker may finally be coming to an end.
It would be nice if they let us log into Full Til and get our money out through the Cashier!
Hey Cave Man!
Yes, I agree that is the way it should have been done from the start. Once the DoJ got involved, however, that was something that wasn’t likely. I will continue to monitor the situation with the claims process. The claims administrator shouldn’t make people jump through too many hurdles, considering that the feds have all the info on the people that had money on FTP. They should make the process easy, although those with big $$$ might have to do a bit more legwork.
Thanks for reading!
EB