Home / Poker News January 2013 / The Poker Grapevine – Ferguson Looking to Settle
The Poker Grapevine – Ferguson Looking to Settle
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2013-01-31 07:31
Like the other high-profile Full Tilt Poker executives, Chris Ferguson has been working on ironing out a settlement with the US DoJ, but unlike some of his fellow perpetrators, he is yet to achieve anything concrete in this sense. His civil case is still pending, despite the extensive negotiations in which the two sides have been engaged for a while. The deadline on the agreement they were supposed to reach was January 28, which obviously came and went without any sort of a deal being reached. Ferguson has filed a motion to dismiss his civil case, to which the Government is yet to respond. Given that the original deadline had already passed, the DoJ gained an extension: it now has until February 18 to respond to Ferguson’s motion.
Two of the former Full Tilt board members, Rafe Furst and Howard Lederer, have already settled with the Government, forfeiting millions of dollars in assets and still getting off easy. Ferguson and Bitar are the two executives left to settle their issues. While Furst, Lederer and Ferguson do not face criminal charges, Bitar is an exception in this sense: he’s looking at 145 years in jail for running the
online poker operation like an international Ponzi scheme, on charges ranging from conspiracy to commit bank fraud, to money laundering. Bitar had surrendered to the authorities in July 2012 and he posted a $2.5 million bail.
In other, related news: the DoJ is apparently preparing an announcement aimed at US players who still have monies stuck at Full Tilt Poker. The DoJ has undertaken the remission process in regards to Full Tilt’s US customers last July. They have announced that they were looking for a third party claims administrator, but not much has surfaced news-wise since.
