US Attorney Preet Bharara has revealed that instead of players funds being safe and secure, as promised by Full Tilt Poker, their finances were being used for a \u201cmassive Ponzi scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
An attorney representing Full Tilt Poker, Jeff Ifrah, stated that it\u2019s unfair that the company be labeled as a Ponzi scheme as opposed to an illegal investment scheme.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Ponzi scheme requires an investment vehicle in order to receive a certain rate of high return. None of those things happened here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n Players cheated<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cFull Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme. As a result of our enforcement actions, this alleged self-dealing scheme came to light,\u201d stated Bharara. \u201cNot only did the firm orchestrate a massive fraud against the US banking system, Full Tilt also cheated and abused its own players to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n Bharara alleges that over a four-year period Full Tilt Poker was using money from player\u2019s accounts to pay its owners as well as it board members. This amounted to over $440 million. Instead of covering its players\u2019 accounts, it was taking care of its own interests first.<\/p>\n Bharara explained, \u201cFull Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety of the money deposited with the company.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Finances separate<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet, the poker company claimed that players\u2019 accounts were separated from the operating accounts. They explained that this was to protect both the players and the business. They assured in emails to the players that their money belonged to them and not Full Tilt Poker.<\/p>\n False claims<\/strong><\/p>\n Prosecutors found this not to be the case when they looked into the company\u2019s operations. They discovered before the criminal complaint which was filed against the pokers site in April that players were owed $390 million, whereas the owners, executive boards, and celebrity players had been paid $443 million. Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson alone were paid $42 million and $25 million, respectively. Only $60 million was found remaining in the Full Tilt Poker bank account.<\/p>\n Free gambling<\/strong><\/p>\n Bharara explained that the massive shortfall developed back in August 2010 when the American Full Tilt website suffered from a network disruption. It was unable to collect money from the players based in America but kept crediting funds instead of letting US players know the situation.<\/p>\n In the end, the poker company credited $130 million to the US players\u2019 online gambling accounts. Bharara explained, \u201cWhen players gambled with these phantom funds and lost to other players, a massive shortfall developed.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in April Full Tilt Poker was closed by the FBI along with Absolute Poker and PokerStars. This was in an attempt by the government to crack down on illegal online gambling. The sites are being accused of money laundering and bank fraud as well as illegal gambling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US Attorney Preet Bharara has revealed that instead of players funds being safe and secure, as promised by Full Tilt Poker, their finances were being used for a \u201cmassive Ponzi scheme.\u201d An attorney representing Full Tilt Poker, Jeff Ifrah, stated that it\u2019s unfair that the company be labeled as a Ponzi scheme as opposed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,25],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casino","tag-online-gambling","tag-poker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":481,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}