Home / Poker News September 2011 / Finally: Full Tilt Poker Issues Statement
Finally: Full Tilt Poker Issues Statement
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2011-09-01 15:45
There have been all sorts of speculations and even unauthorized statements regarding Full Tilt Poker’s woes and the likelihood of its players ever seeing their monies again, through various online and offline channels over the last few weeks. What we didn’t have though, was an official statement from the site addressing the above said issues. Well, now we have that statement too, and even though it doesn’t really dispense lots of good news for players, at least it clarifies some things.
The question on every poker player’s mind was: what happened to the millions of dollars that
Full Tilt Poker was supposed to pay out to its US-based players.
According to the statement released through Forbes.com, the site had been hit badly through the various government funds-seizures even before Black Friday. To add to the mounting pile of problems, a grand-scale theft also took place: one of the site’s payment processors had apparently made off with about $42 million.
According to the statement, the company never believed that it was operating in breach of US law. Many an expert legal opinion backed up the position of the company, but that did not prevent the government from seizing around $115 million from the company’s coffers. It also did not prevent the DoJ from unleashing hell and brimstone on the operation on April 15th, just as officials were moving to control the damage caused by the above mentioned payment processor theft.
Over the 4 months that have passed since then, Full Tilt Poker has been actively looking for investors that would bail the company out, and that would make it possible for the company to return the player monies. At least 6 groups interested in purchasing the operation have visited the Full Tilt’s Dublin headquarters. While the returning of player funds is a rather complex operation given the current legal status of online poker, Full Tilt Poker has assured its players that it was wholly committed to paying them back in full.
