Garden City Group (GCG), the Full Tilt Poker Claims Administrator authorized by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced on its website Friday that former Full Tilt affiliates will be eligible to submit Petitions for Remission. Affiliates were previously excluded from the reimbursement process.
In September, a list of ineligible parties was leaked to the public just ahead of the start of the filing process. The first bullet on said list was, “A past or present employee of FTP or any of its past or present affiliates.” It is believed that affiliates and others were excluded from the process because there was not enough money available to reimburse everybody who is owed funds from Full Tilt Poker. Rather than pro-rating amounts to everyone, it may have looked better to simply exclude those people who had some sort of business relationship with Full Tilt.
Some of those who were excluded made sense. Shareholders, directors, and officers of Full Tilt and its related companies had direct or indirect responsibility for what went on at the poker room, so allowing them to be reimbursed after Full Tilt stole player funds would have felt wrong. Affiliates, though they drove people to deposit on Full Tilt, did not know about the shenanigans that were going on there, so for them it was more or less guilt by association. On top of that, many were players themselves, allowed to become “self-affiliates” so that they could earn rakeback.
Thus, affiliates will now be able to submit a Petition for Remission, but only for that portion of their funds that were earned through regular poker play. Affiliate earnings are off limits. GCG is in the process of receiving affiliate account information from Full Tilt Poker and will e-mail eligible affiliates with instructions once all the information is received and reviewed. At that point, affiliates will have thirty days to complete the Petition process.
Everyone else who was previously deemed eligible to receive a refund of their frozen Full Tilt Poker funds should have already received an e-mail with a Petition Number and Control Number. The vast majority of the e-mails went out September 16th and September 17th; people could begin filing Petitions on September 18th. On October 1st, GCG announced that all e-mails had gone out to eligible players. Those who have yet to file their claim still have about a month to do so, as the deadline is November 16th. Funds will be dispersed via electronic funds transfer some time after that deadline.
There may be some former Full Tilt customers in the United States who did not receive an e-mail from GCG. Those people are still allowed to file a claim for their funds, but they will have to submit proof of what they are owed.
