Once again, Full Tilt Poker is facing some legal trouble– this time at the hands of a team of lawyers who are leveling yet another class action lawsuit against the company. Unlike previous lawsuits, however, this one is aimed not just at owners and heavy hitters for the company, which has been defunct since Black Friday last April, but also against Full Tilt’s legal counsel, the law firm Cozen O’Connor.
This particular suit is worth a hefty 900 million dollars, and it relies heavily on the United States’ RICO legislation, which is set up to protect individuals against racketeering and organized crime. According to the lawsuit, Cozen O’Connor has received over two million dollars in exchange for services directly related to covering up FTP’s illegal business practices. These accusations may draw the attention of the US Department of Justice, which is already investigating Full Tilt for the money laundering that their lawyers allegedly helped to conceal.
Legal precedents indicate that this means that the lawyers (as well as FTP themselves) should be returning all of those ill-gotten gains to the people from whom those funds were taken. Lary Kennedy and Greg Omotoy, who filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, have left room in their lawsuit for a total of 200,000 plaintiffs, all of whom have the right to seek both the return of their money and damages from the company. In similar cases, all those who have benefited from an organization’s shady dealings have been forced to return the money they gained.
According to the lawsuit that Kennedy and Omotoy have filed, the problem with Full Tilt Poker seems to be largely that they’re operating like the large, corrupt corporations against which American citizens are currently rebelling– FTP, according to the lawsuit, failed to “create financial reserves for amounts held on behalf of players,” and instead took player money and spent it elsewhere, including handouts to key defendants and pushing forward a money laundering scheme.
If there’s one thing that the Occupy Wall Street has demonstrated in the past month, it’s that the vast majority of Americans are tired of seeing large corporations steal their money, break laws, and then get bailed out by larger corporations (or the government). What’s a poor corporation to do when they’ve made a few mistakes here and there, and now the angry mob steadily approaches? To start with: apologize.
There’s a saying that an apology consists of three parts: admitting that what you’ve done is wrong, acknowledging the damage caused and vowing not to repeat past mistakes, and making reparations to those who have been harmed. PokerStars, which was in the same boat as FTP on Black Friday, managed to make nice with their clients and the US Department of Justice because they managed to apologize– as such, their business has not suffered and has even grown. Perhaps Full Tilt could learn something from this model, if only to say, “Sorry we messed up… now let’s talk about how we can get your money back to you.”