Home / Poker News December 2013 / 2013 Poker Retrospective – Part 10
2013 Poker Retrospective – Part 10
Posted by: Mark Baldwing - Mon, 2013-12-30 08:32
The biggest question on the minds of poker players from the US, who had funds stuck at Full Tilt Poker following the Black Friday indictments of April 2011, was: when am I going to see my money returned? Although it has now been 32 months since the said monies were frozen in the coffers of the DoJ, one can’t really say that anybody got any of that money back. In fact, the money repaid to this day amounts exactly to $0. That does not mean however that there has been no progress made in this respect in 2013. In fact, for the first time in more than two and a half years, actual steps have been taken towards the remission of the
Full Tilt Poker funds to US-based
online poker players. Needless to say, this progress ranks extremely high on our biggest poker stories of the year list.
The first actual step in the right direction was taken in July, 2012, when the DoJ gave its blessings to the acquisition of the hopeless Full Tilt Poker brand by former competitor
PokerStars. Within 90 days of the DoJ’s approval, PokerStars repaid all pending balances to players outside the US, effectively re-launching the Full Tilt Poker brand in the process.
Some $150 million still owed to US players remained in limbo though. The Government hired a third-party claims administrator to begin making heads and tails of who was owed how much money.
The Garden City Group worked on the issue for a while and then, on September 16, 2013, the much awaited announcement was made that players could file claims at a specially set-up website, up until November 16.
After much confusion surrounding the initial exclusion of Full Tilt pros and affiliates from the remission process, the GCG has finally nailed down the rules and the claims process wrapped up successfully.
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