Full Tilt Poker Claims Process Appears to be Done

According to Flushdraw.net, the remissions process for those who had poker funds frozen in the Full Tilt Poker Black Friday scandal is effectively complete. According to the Garden City Group (GCG) the Full Tilt Claims administrator appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice, every petition for reimbursement submitted by players has been processed.

There have been nine waves of payments to former U.S.-based Full Tilt customers, the first of which occurred in February 2014, nearly three years after player deposits were frozen or disappeared. That initial batch of payments was by far the largest, but the GCG had much more work after that, as more petitions came streaming in, incomplete records had to be fixed, and changes had to made to policies about who could and could not get their money back. Per Flushdraw, the dollar amounts and numbers of payments for each round were as follows:

February 2014: $76 million, 27,500 accounts
April 2014: $5 million, 2,200 accounts
June 2014: $14 million, 3,200 accounts
September 2014: $1.8 million, 600 accounts
March 2015: $2.8 million, 3,500 accounts
June 2015: $4 million, 4,000 accounts
November 2015: $5.7 million, 2,000 accounts
March 2016: $2.6 million, 1,180 accounts
November 2016: $2.6 million, 1,000 accounts

All told, that’s 45,180 U.S. player accounts (including mine!) and $114.5 million. Full Tilt actually owed $160 million to United States players, so the DoJ and GCG are going to split a nice bonus check on this deal. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the GCG just isn’t paying out $45.5 million because screw the players; there are likely thousands of former players who never submitted a claim. At the same time, though, that sizable group of players also probably didn’t have that much money at stake, so there are almost certainly tens of millions of dollars left over that will never find their way home through no fault of the players.

There were also 1,635 denied petitions, 1,500 announced in May and 135 from GCG’s latest update. No reasons were given publically for denials, though it would not be surprising if incomplete or incorrect information never got reconciled.

Many of the denials may have involved accounts that were extremely complicated. One of the more touchy situations involved sponsored pros and affiliates. Both of these groups usually earned two types of income from Full Tilt: money from playing poker like the rest of us and income from their business relationships with Full Tilt. Income from the latter category was usually deposited in the players’ poker accounts and because the GCG denied claims from people who received business-related income from Full Tilt, those people found that they weren’t getting anything at all back. The Poker Players Alliance talked with the GCG and helped the company understand the difference between poker playing income and business income. Thus, the GCG reversed course and allowed sponsored pros and affiliates to receive their refunds, but only for money earned through actual poker play.

Though the remission process is now closed and the entire five and a half year ordeal is essentially done, the GCG did say in October that it “will continue to work with the Department of Justice to evaluate appeals, and any previously denied Petitions that are determined to be payable will be included in an upcoming distribution.”