Full Tilt Poker Payments Arrive for U.S. Players | Hacker News Reader

Full Tilt Poker Payments Arrive for U.S. Players

pokerupdate.com

62 pointswhbk32 comments

I'd like to make the point that PokerStars paid for these payments and offered to pay the players directly and immediately.

However, this offer was rejected, and instead PokerStars paid the amount of the balances (I'm not sure about any fees, etc), and then the players needed to wait until now to receive payment.

Rest of world customers of Full Tilt were able to receive payment from PokerStars long before now.

Edit: For transparency's sake, I do work for PokerStars, I don't speak for them, and I wasn't directly involved with any of the US/DOJ stuff.

Please share the thanks of a grateful nation (or at least the poker playing portion :)) with your coworkers. Mentioned this in a Twitter rant about this whole ordeal, but to this day PokerStars is the best company I've ever dealt with regardless of industry. I wish I could continue to give you guys my business. Thanks for protecting us from our disgraceful government.

As someone who was affected by this (non-U.S.), I have to say I was very satisfied with how PokerStars handled everything. When Full Tilt was shut down I essentially treated the funds I had on there as a write-off, and was delighted by the windfall of actually being reimbursed some time later.

DOJ has effectively removed all of that lucre from the poker economy. I was hoping the US players wouldn't be paid back until they could play online again. It would have been much better for the rest of us if their Tilt/Stars accounts had simply been credited with the money like everyone else.

Of course that's an entirely selfish point of view.

Got mine this morning, 1048 days later. Nice, but hardly makes up for this whole ordeal, yet another reminder of just how free the "Land of the Free" we live in is.

I don't suppose there is any chance that they at least gave you some interest for your troubles?

Oh of course not, and I'll likely be treated to an audit to boot. People were selling their FTP balances for extremely low amounts (.20 on the dollar at one point?) though, so while ridiculous I'm still on cloud nine. Someone stole thousands of dollars from me and I got it back..not everyday that happens :)

Did you forget about it and then when the check showed up it was like finding a FIN ($20) in your jeans? Or did you feel like you were always going to get it, it was just a matter of time?

Just curious, that's all.

FYI, for some reason your reply to at-fates-hands (sibling comment to this one) is hellbanned. I have no idea why.

Huh, weird. Thanks for the heads up, though I also have no clue what the reasoning behind that is.

After filing for my claim in November, I got mine back yesterday (http://ngokevin.com/blog/poker11/). It shows up in my bank account as "Doj Poker Stars".

Wow - I'm surprised that there would be any money left after all the legal wrangling.

There wasn't any money - PokerStars agreed to buy the shutdown Full Tilt Company, Infrastructure and Assets in full, then re-pay all the customers of Full Tilt our of their own pocket, mainly to stop the DOJ chasing after Pokerstars as well.

Part of me wonders if the same type of strong arming will start to happen with bitcoin.

Oh it will.

MtGox already had assets seized by DHS/ICE:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/16/mt-gox-dwolla-account-money...

I haven't heard anything about my claim yet aside from getting the "claim approved" email back in the fall. Should I be worried?

I hadn't heard anything since that email until the 24th of this month when they sent an email saying my claim would be deposited in the next week. It was deposited today.

Well that only took ~3 years. Thank you US Attorney Preet Bharara. I appreciate you protecting me from....me.

I would have lost it all. Now, where can I buy some lotto tickets.

Those are taxed, so that's perfectly OK.

By confiscating all your money, no less. Protecting and serving.

Don't forget empowering organised criminals.

Do you like anything he does? He seems to have a pretty good record [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preet_Bharara

Hes also the one who subpoenaed Mt.Gox http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/27/us-bitcoin-subpoen...

Define "good". Obtaining oppressively long sentences for non-violent crimes isn't "good" for anyone imo. His brother made $500 million selling diapers. The world would be a better place if Preet were a diaper salesman like his brother instead of doing things like ensuring that poker players have to play illegally. The worst part is that he does all of this for one thing: camera time. He is angling for elected office on the backs of those whose lives he has destroyed while pursuing prosecutions that increasingly stretch the boundaries of criminal law.

• Got a settlement for $7.2 billion from the Picower estate to go toward victims of Madoff.

• Got a $1.7 billion settlement from JPMorgan (Madoff's primary banker) to go toward victims of Madoff.

• Prosecution of several corrupt politicians.

• Galleon Group insider trading case.

• Prosecution of dozens of members of the Gambino crime family, and of New York gangs such as the Bloods.

• Created the Complex Frauds Unit that prosecuted massive disability benefits fraud, and a $57 million fraud against a program that aids survivors of Nazi persecution.

• Prosecution of the Times Square Bomber. Prosecution o Ahmed Ghailani for the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

• Prosecuted Deutsche Bank and Allied Home Mortgage for fraudulent lending practices.

• Massive suit against Bank of America for mortgage fraud.

OK, and do you call shutting down the entire online poker industry, and ensuring that people didn't receive their money for 3 years, "good"? His actions prior to Black Friday actually created the primary problems at Full Tilt. They were trying to honor customer withdrawal requests, even after Preet et al shut down their ability to collect deposits, thinking that the ability would eventually be restored. So they wound up with a huge hole in their books. Their good customer service combined with Preet's lust for another headline is what caused millions of American players to be without their money for 3 years.

Oh, and how about his anti-Bitcoin efforts? Are those "good"? Your list also conspicuously leaves off the countless drug mules that his office has obtained might-as-well-be-life sentences for. He has done nothing in the way of diversion programs that other federal districts have adopted. Why? Because, despite their effectiveness, those don't create headlines that he can show in campaign commercials in a few years.

> Oh, and how about his anti-Bitcoin efforts?

What anti-Bitcoin efforts? I'm aware of two things he was involved in that were tangentially related to Bitcoin, and one that is more directly related to Bitcoin.

1. The Silk Road case. This is only tangentially related to Bitcoin. The Silk Road defendants are in trouble for their alleged dealing in illegal substances and alleged involvement in murder-for-hire schemes. They would be in the same amount of legal trouble if they had been using any foreign currency for their transactions instead of Bitcoin.

2. The Charlie Shrem case. Also only tangentially related to Bitcoin. He is in trouble for allegedly purposefully participating in money laundering. He would be in the same trouble if he had been money laundering by exchange US dollars for Euros, instead of for Bitcoins.

3. The subpoena of Mt. Gox. We don't know what action the prosecutors are considering, if any, since this is just a subpoena (basically, it means they want more information to figure out what, if anything, Mt. Gox might have done wrong). If Mt. Gox is eventually charged, it will almost certainly be for something like fraud or theft, although since the fraud or theft involved Bitcoins themselves, one could make a somewhat passable argument that at least this case is more than tangentially related to Bitcoin.

It's pretty hard to make a rational argument that any of these are anti-Bitcoin, unless you think that the point of Bitcoin is to be able to money launder, commit fraud, and steal Bitcoin from other Bitcoin users who trust you to hold their coins for them.

Come on. Full tilt decided to run a Ponzi scheme when they were unable to collect funds in the us due to online poker being illegal in the us. They gambled with all their customers funds and lost. That is not good customer service, that is immoral and illegal.

Poker stars is the company that had good customer service in that they didn't touch the deposits, as promised, and so we're able to be back in business almost immediately.

Good: putting press and publicity first, justice ... uhm ... somewhere.

Good: ruthlessly gobbling up medium sized fish to make a (laughable) Robin Hood name for yourself, while letting your big fish masters (JPM, GS, etc) go totally unscathed.

By these standards, and those of the NY electorate, he isn't doing good, he's doing great. Heck, it worked for Giuliani, Spitzer, Cuomo, and many more, so why not ... (Although an Indian mayor of NYC is a bit of a stretch ... fuhgehdaboutit!)

A bit more background for the uninitiated: http://t.co/GT8YsOZlrT

Link goes to http://espn.go.com/blog/poker/post/_/id/1528/green-friday-ft...

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