Category: Poker Rooms

According to sources at Subjectpoker.com, both Phil Ivey and David Benyamine have, over the course of the past two to three years, borrowed large amounts of money from Full Tilt Poker.

Benyamine’s accounts are the seemingly less harmful of the two– while he still owes money to FTP, the remarkable thing is that he was overheard talking on the phone while in Vegas, asking about money for his WSOP buy-ins (Full Tilt was sponsoring him before they went belly-up), and that in early May, he was able to withdraw money (over 5,000 dollars) from his FTP account for travel expenses. If Full Tilt was in a bind and could not transfer money through the site by the time the WSOP rolled around, how was Benyamine getting his money? It seems that a lot of what happens at Full Tilt is going on behind the scenes, away from the prying eyes of customers (and accountants).

According to Ivey’s account records, he has borrowed $11 million from Full Tilt Poker and has yet to repay about $6 million of it. How many players accounts could be settled with that returned money? What did Ivey hope to gain by suing Full Tilt about the frozen accounts? Consider Full Tilt Poker’s statement after Phil Ivey filed his lawsuit against FTP (and hastily withdrew– and no wonder!):

• “In an effort to further enrich himself at the expense of others, Mr. Ivey appears to have timed his lawsuit to thwart pending deals with several parties that would put money back in players’ pockets. In fact, Mr. Ivey has been invited — and has declined — to take actions that could assist the company in these efforts, including paying back a large sum of money he owes the site.”

Is it possible that Full Tilt is tired of being on the hook for their economic disaster, and they’re leaking information about Ivey and Benyamine to give the public someone else to hate? Well, that’s entirely possible (and not unlikely, actually). The public, however, doesn’t seem to be taken aback so much by the fact that the players were loaned extraordinary amounts of money, but that Full Tilt let them. Likewise, Benyamine isn’t being blamed for withdrawing money from his account– instead, FTP customers are wondering why he can take money out of his US-based account when no one else can.

What’s really worrisome about this (apart from the fact that Full Tilt has no problem throwing around millions of dollars to its select players but can’t seem to manage paying back its customers, whose accounts are still frozen) is that this may be an indication of how Full Tilt does business on a greater scale. How many players in the rest of Team Full Tilt (there are thirteen players besides Ivey) or among the Full Tilt Pros (Benyamine is one of the 159) are getting the same kinds of deals that these two are? One irate former Full Tilt player, upon learning of these developments, has expressed frustration that Full Tilt has been “an ATM that certain pros were able to access at will.” More and more, it seems as thought Full Tilt is not in a position where they can’t pay people back, but one where they won’t pay people back.

The class action lawsuit against Full Tilt names Phil Ivey and other members of Team Full Tilt and Full Tilt Pros as partial owners of Full Tilt, and claims that they are in part responsible for the actions of the company. Regardless of whether or not this is true, Ivey and other pros played fast and loose with Full Tilt Poker, and while these transfers and loans may well not be illegal, to a poker-loving public that doesn’t have millions of dollars to throw around and is still waiting to see their money, these actions certainly seem a little dicey. To access all the details from subjectpoker’s investigation, visit the following URL:

• www.subjectpoker.com/2011/07/ivey-benyamine/

Bet24, the online sportsbooking and poker site, has announced Monday that they were the target of a security breach. The company sent out an email to its current and past customers letting them know that some of their personal information may have been compromised. While this is becoming more and more common of late, especially with the Sony scandal a few months ago, what’s particularly unique about the case with Bet24 is that they were hacked in December 2009… and they’re just now telling customers about it, some 19 months later.

When police recovered unauthorized data, including personal and account information belonging to different sites, including Bet24, the Malta-based company came forward and issued a statement something like, “Oh, yeah, by the way, some of your data was lost in a security breach almost two years ago, and since the authorities have already recovered it, we may as well come clean and admit that it happened before someone else tell you.” Really, Bet24’s hesitation to come forward with this information until they absolutely had to begs two questions: first, would they have ever told their customers if the stolen information hadn’t been recovered? Second, how many other online poker sites have had likewise assaults and aren’t reporting them?

The stolen data included customer names and contact information, user account IDs, passwords, and numbers for the card(s) used for payment. Some players have reported fraudulent use of their information both on and off the Bet24 site, and surely they would have liked to have known about the breach a little bit sooner. Bet24’s security notice states, “A small number of customers have alerted us to unauthorised activity on their Bet24 accounts, and we have fully reimbursed them for any financial loss incurred on their accounts.” That’s really the least that they can do, all things considered, but seeing as the poker world is currently filled with players irate because they haven’t been given their money back, Bet24’s attempts to watch their backs by keeping player alarm at a minimum seem to be satisfactory.

What isn’t satisfactory, however, is the unspoken failure attached. As Bet24’s security notice also says, “The stolen information is so far known to have been used to access a limited number of customers’ Bet24 accounts, third-party accounts and personal email accounts.” Now, security breaches happen, and surely Bet24 can’t be held entirely responsible for any information that escaped their site; truthfully, Bet24’s culpability is a more complicated subject that would require analysis of the quality of their security at the time. Waiting 19 months to inform customers of the breach, however, does make them culpable for the damages that resulted. If players had been informed of the types of information taken by the hacker(s), they could have taken the necessary precautions– changing passwords, watching bank statements and other activity more closely, etc. But the fact of the matter is this: Bet24 just sat on the information. They claim that they made efforts to counteract the damage done, but all of these measures– beefing up security, resetting passwords for some customers, etc– don’t take into consideration that the security breach caused a ripple of damage that extended beyond the site.

When asked why Bet24 didn’t report the breach to their customers sooner, a customer service representative (who we can be sure was just providing the script given to all customer service representatives) responded, “We were not aware until very recently that this customer data had been stolen. At the time of the security breach in December 2009 we were advised by our database managers that no data had been copied. We are working closely with the police authorities to establish how the information was stolen, how it has been used, and which customers are affected.”

It seems, Bet24, that discovering these crucial details now is too little, too late.

In a move that seems to have removed all doubt that Full Tilt has no interest in their players, the company filed to adjourn their hearing with the Alderney Gaming Control Commission until September. What’s more is that they made this official request in private, shutting out a courtroom full of journalists and players anxious to hear news from a site that they feel has abandoned them.

The AGCC had created this open hearing so that they could air Full Tilt’s dirty laundry in public, stating that the players and the rest of the public had a right to the information behind the license suspension for the popular online poker site. Andre Wilsenach, the Executive Director of the AGCC, stated that they wanted a public hearing because it “demonstrates [their] willingness to act transparently.” Not transparently enough, it seems, to allay the concerns of a public that is now crying foul.

Full Tilt lawyer Martin Heslop began today’s hearing by requesting a private hearing to determine whether the AGCC would adjourn the proceedings until later. Although he claims that this was not due to Full Tilt’s attempts to hide anything from their players, but rather to respect the delicacy of the situation with the mysterious, unnamed buyer/investor, especially given the media frenzy surrounding this case, a lot of people are skeptical. After Heslop’s request, professional poker player Harry Demetriou stood up and shouted, “What about the interests of the players? Why are you protecting this corrupt company?” He was removed from the courtroom, but not before many other people in the audience could mirror their support of his statement.

One of the new bits of information that we learned from this hearing (apart from the fact that everyone seems to be tired of Full Tilt and their antics by this point) is that the company owes the Alderney Gaming Control Commission ₤250,000, which they have no intention of paying back if their license isn’t reinstated. What does that say about the way that Full Tilt does business? If they don’t get their way, they’re not planning on paying off their debts? Is it just me, or does that not bode well for the countless players who are owed, in sum, hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than just a quarter million to a gaming agency that currently has Full Tilt over a barrel?

As it turns out, the AGCC decided to postpone the hearing until September 15, and the internet erupted into a cacophony of lambasting and criticism as soon as the decision went public. Players, at this point, seem to believe that Full Tilt isn’t on their side any more (if ever they were), but they thought that they could at least trust a regulatory agency that was supposed to protect them. More and more players are criticizing the AGCC, stating that the company is interested only in its own monetary returns, and not that of the countless Full Tilt players who have yet to see a cent of their money returned.

We will have to wait and see what is in store with the upcoming hearing and the “investors” that Full Tilt sources say will be game changers (unless you live in the US, as the “investors” only want the Europe market, leaving US players without any kind of recourse– except for that class action lawsuit). Keep tuned to MaxPokerBonus.co.uk for more breaking poker news!

Newest developments

Professional poker player Phil Gordon was one of many defendants named in the class action lawsuit against Full Tilt Poker, and for him, at least, there’s some good news. Gordon has been voluntarily dismissed from the charges that were filed against him and several others associated with Full Tilt Poker. This means that he has, to the satisfaction of the court, proven that he has never been a part of FTP decision making and never lived within the jurisdiction of the suit, and this opens the door for others to find their way out of the lawsuit.

An order has been issued to all of the defendants to demonstrate their lack of involvement in the suit, but only Phil Gordon has responded so far. The deadlines for the rest of the defendants fall in the beginning of August, with Phil Ivey required to reply by the 8th and John Juanda’s response due on the first of the month.

About RICO

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was originally developed as a means of taking down organized crime syndicates, especially the Mafia. In the past, many members of organized crime groups were exempt from prosecution because there was no evidence connecting them to a crime in a way that would make them culpable for it. Telling someone to commit a crime isn’t the same as committing it, after all, and many leaders in the world of organized crime hid behind this loophole until the RICO Act was created in 1970 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act.

Does Full Tilt Fall Under RICO?

Whether or not Full Tilt’s actions fall under the umbrella of racketeering depends, largely, on the case that the United States Justice Department filed against the corporation on Black Friday. The US government gave Full Tilt the boot in April on charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud, and money laundering, and if these charges hold up in court, Full Tilt most assuredly falls under the purview of racketeering.

The US government and civil case aren’t stopping there, though– they accuse Full Tilt of having a pattern of racketeering activity. If the Department of Justice wins their case, in which they seek a civil forfeiture, all the Full Tilt funds become the property of the DoJ, and Full Tilt is asset-less.

How does this affect the mysterious investors?

The alleged investors are apparently planning to make an appearance at the Full Tilt hearing with the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) to help some sort of agreement be reached, but people all over the world are wondering: Why would anyone want to buy Full Tilt now?

Well, the European investors are apparently only interested in purchasing the company’s European assets, which means that the company would gain a lot of money from a partial sale (although how much is still to be determined, but they’re probably not getting the best deal, as the investors and the US government currently have them over a barrel) and can potentially take those assets and deal with the Department of Justice. There’s a decent chance that both the government and the class action plaintiffs can be appeased if American players get their money back.

If the world of online poker were an ocean, Full Tilt Poker would be comparable to the Titanic, and no matter how many mysterious European investors come along, tossing out life preservers, the former Full Tilt customers seem to see only two options: jump ship and head for land, or go down with the ship (which is still holding all of their money).

More than half of the Full Tilt Poker players have left the site for calmer seas, which means that the other poker sites are seeing a surge in business. We’ve yet to see whether all of the sites picking up these drifters will be able to carry them all in terms of bandwidth, support, and funding, but only time will tell. In truth, many of the smaller sites, especially those in the US market, have been preparing for the day that Full Tilt ran head-on into an iceberg. After the Alderney Gaming Control Commission revoked Full Tilt’s license, followed just over a week later by French gaming overseers ARJEL pulling FTP’s ability to operate in France, it seemed that the site was gaining water far too quickly to survive. The class-action lawsuits against Full Tilt didn’t help matters any– the Poker Players Alliance recently released a legal guide that helps players determine whether they should proceed with legal action against a site with frozen accounts. They don’t call Full Tilt by name, but we all know who they mean.

Everest Poker has seen a 46% increase in clientele since the FTP debacle, likely due to the fact that former Full Tilt players are probably a little short on funds now, what with all their accounts frozen, and Everest offers a bonus that’s hard to beat when you’re low on funds. Unlike most sites, which offer a matching bonus on up to a certain amount, Everest Poker will give you $500 regardless of how much money you deposit. It’s a very appealing prospect for non-US players who are looking to build up their bankroll. Everest had 315 new customers, giving it a substantial increase in size, but it’s still small in terms of new clients when compared to bigger sites, which brought in more people.

PokerStars, despite being affected by Black Friday like FTP and Absolute Poker (which is down 96%), has managed to gain 3382 new players, while partypoker, the iPoker Network, and 888 Poker have all taken advantage of this opportunity and gained more clients and popularity. 888 Poker was one of the first online poker sites to come up with new and improved bonuses immediately following the FTP license revocation, while PokerStars is living off their reputation as the number one site by bolstering it with advertisements pointing out all the differences between PokerStars and Full Tilt (PokerStars has returned a good portion of players’ money, for instance).

Surprisingly enough, Everleaf Gaming Network has also taken a small hit, likely due to the novelty of their two largest sites, PokerView and No Bad Beats Poker, wearing off.

Our Recommendations

Max Poker Bonus’ recommendations, since we are a UK focused poker portal after al, would be in respective order: bet365 Poker (which is the largest and fastest growing room of the iPoker Network), partypoker (the second largest room in terms of traffic), and 888 Poker (a great alternative which you can try with $8 free). Make sure to read the reviews about these poker rooms we have just updated, and be sure to know that we carry the best poker bonuses available for these rooms.

Another great alternative would be PKR Poker, an innovative 3 dimensional poker room with lots traffic and games, available for both Windows and Mac computers.

For the last two weeks, the poker world has been on edge, especially the American players, who have suffered greatly from the complete shutdown of Full Tilt Poker due to the legal proceedings by the United States government against the site. Since the Alderney Gaming Control Commission revoked the Full Tilt license, only to be followed shortly by French licensing group Arjel doing the same, things have looked bad for the site, which was formerly one of the top three online poker sites. Due to a mysterious group of still as of yet unnamed European investors, however, things may have turned a corner for Full Tilt.

According to Jeff Ifrah, a lawyer for Full Tilt Poker, the investors have already entered into discussion with both the AGCC and Arjel and are likely to reach a settlement with the United States Department of Justice as well.

The deal with the European investors, he says, is centered around the idea of paying back the players who have had money frozen in their Full Tilt Poker accounts, which means that Full Tilt is hoping to get the class action lawsuit that has been filed against them by disgruntled US players dropped. He further goes on to assert that the interested parties are not one of Full Tilt’s competitors, sweeping in to save the day and get a larger margin of the market, but a team of individuals from the financial sector who are new to e-gaming but see it as a lucrative investment.

Rumours abound about the potential purchase of Full Tilt Poker, and it’s hard for the public to sort out what is and isn’t true. One news source reported that Ray Bitar had been removed from his position as CEO of Full Tilt, a rumour which ruined his day when he came in to work and read the (untrue) news. The FTP lawyer denied this rumour outright.

Because of Black Friday, which severely impacted two businesses that not only do a lot of business world-wide but are also located within the purview of UK legislation, we can expect some changes to UK online gambling legislation to come out of all of this chaos. Online poker is particularly hard to legislate, due to its ability to cross borders and the tendency of many operators to try to find loopholes in the payment/access methods, such as e-wallets and proxy servers. The United Kingdom’s legislative and regulatory bodies are reconsidering their previous stance of letting overseas companies run rampant, as the tactic of trusting local authorities to successfully regulate the companies within their jurisdiction has severely backfired.

Since Black Friday caused the majority of American poker players to lose their online places and therefore sponsorships, the majority of players from the United States who are taking part in this year’s World Series of Poker have come without patches demonstrating their loyalties and backers; Full Tilt patches, which in previous years were omnipresent, are nowhere to be seen now. Full Tilt Pro Phil Ivey is sitting out this year’s WSOP in protest, due to the event’s associations with Full Tilt.

While Full Tilt Poker scrambled to complete a deal with its mysterious “European investors” in time to save the company from further damage, the site failed to have any success in solving their problems, with negotiations with the Alderney Gaming Control Commission (AGCC) ending in a lot of hypothetical discussions.

Full Tilt has been scrambling to get its site reopened in Europe as quickly as possible, due in large to threats from Arjel, the organization that oversees French gaming (Arjel is to France what the AGCC is to Alderney) that they will lose their license if French players are not allowed access to their accounts and allowed to play “immediately”. A week later, Arjel has announced that Full Tilt’s time is up, and the regulatory body for online poker play in France has suspended Full Tilt’s license to play in France.

The English translation of Arjel’s statement is as follows:

Paris, July 4, 2011
Suspension of registration of the company Rekop Limited (fulltiltpoker.fr)
The panel of the Regulatory Authority of online gaming has decided to suspend, as a precaution, the approval of the operator of online poker.
After this period of suspension, justified by the interruption technique to access the site. Fr and the need for new economic and financial guarantees from the operator, who was given notice on 16 May file a request for confirmation of approval, the college will decide the continuation or revocation of this approval.
The ARJEL is in contact with the operator of any conditions to ensure a satisfactory refinancing of the latter, a necessary condition for confirmation of the approval and protection of the interests of players.

As Arjel explains in their statement, because of the loss of license from the AGCC, Full Tilt cannot open their doors to new players until their American players have been given their money back, and the site has no means of gaining income, due to the revocation of their license, so the site will be forced to sell. Because of the wild ride that Full Tilt Poker has been on since Black Friday, but especially in the last week and a half, Arjel has decided to pull Full Tilt Poker’s license to operate in France– largely as a precaution. Arjel does not want to see what happened to American Full Tilt Poker players happen in France.

The Full Tilt website, which previously said that the site was down first for “system maintenance” and then for “a system upgrade” (neither of which is true, save for in the most generous interpretation of those words), now has a message from the AGCC, stating that they are in discussions with Full Tilt and a still-unnamed third party to try to reopen the Full Tilt Poker site, but that, as of yet, talks are all that’s happening.

Read the statement from the AGCC below:

Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) is in discussions, all be at an early stage, with its licensees trading as Full Tilt Poker and a third party concerning the prospective refinancing of Full Tilt Poker.
The objective of these discussions is to enable the site to re-open to its current and prospective players.
Contrary to current reports circulating in the media, AGCC has not authorised any statement by legal counsel in this regard and has no knowledge of the comments attributed by the editor of Gambling City.net to a Mr. Werner Bers, of whom we are otherwise unaware, and disputes the correctness of his statement.
All and any further authorised announcements on this matter will be found on the website of AGCC at www.gamblingcontrol.org

Only time will tell if Full Tilt Poker will make it back after the series of surprising upsets that it has suffered, but with every license that gets pulled, it seems a little more unlikely that Full Tilt will be able to reclaim the status that it once held.

Several former US players at Full Tilt Poker have grown tired of waiting for their funds to be returned to them and decided to take matters into their own hands by filing a class action lawsuit with the US District Court South District of New York, claiming Full Tilt Poker as the defendant. The lawsuit demands not only a return of the plaintiffs’ money, but also damages for suffering that they have endured at the hands of Full Tilt’s carelessness.

The court paperwork further goes on to accuse Full Tilt Poker of racketeering, stating that the only reason that players suffered losses was because executives and others associated with Full Tilt Poker willfully committed wire and bank fraud and money laundering, neglecting their customers in order to “pad their own pockets”. The plaintiffs are seeking recompense via the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), which was designed in 1970 to help put an end to organized crime; by claiming that Full Tilt violated the RICO Act, the lawsuit is creating far more trouble for Full Tilt than it may initially seem. To enforce the RICO Act, the Attorney General can create a special task force aimed at investigating and uncovering any illegal operations in which Full Tilt has engaged; this gives the US government more force with which to drive the investigation into the site.

Some news sources speculate on what will become of this lawsuit after the sale of Full Tilt Poker, but class action lawsuits have a tendency to be tenacious and not simply go away when money is thrown at them, and as the RICO Act specifically covers fraud, violations of state gambling laws, and money laundering (all charges initially brought against the site in April of this year), the case itself is not without merit. A RICO indictment also means that the US Attorney General’s office can freeze assets for the company and require a performance bond (or “good faith money”), and because RICO examines patterns of behaviour for the company, the odds of a win for the plaintiffs are solid. As the plaintiffs stand to gain not only their money back, but also treble damages (damages that are multiplied by a factor of three due to the willful nature of the crimes), it is unlikely that they will back down.

Curiously enough, the suit not only names the CEOs and companies that are a part of FTP, but also brings charges against many of Team Full Tilt, including Phil Ivey, who had dropped his own suit against Full Tilt less than 36 hours before. The lawsuit claims that Ivey is a partial owner of Full Tilt (with at least 5% stake), and that he and the other professional players “represent the Full Tilt brand” and “all own an equity interest in– and are directors of– the Full Tilt and/or the entities that operate under the Full Tilt name”.

This class action suit appears to be a continuation of the charges brought against the site in April, as it cites the same evidence as the initial case, which claims that Full Tilt created a series of sham companies and used them to make US player money harder to track. The case states that this was done without the knowledge of US customers (a claim which is at best very questionable), but US law does not hold players accountable in this instance, stating that it is the responsibility of the banks and the companies to ensure that they only receive funds through legal channels.

• To read the full text of the court documents, click here.

Within days of the complete shutdown of Full Tilt Poker’s operations, the company is seeking to be bought out by investors in Europe, hoping that the change of management will allow them to regain their license. Full Tilt Poker will be exchanging a majority share of their parent company, Pocket Kings, which is based in Ireland, in exchange for the money needed to repay customers the money that was in their currently-frozen accounts, as well as the cash that the company needs to defend themselves against a barrage of accusations from the US government.

The name of the European investors, as well as other details of the deal, are currently being kept on the down low, so as not to draw too much attention or be overly complicated by the lawsuits currently pending against the large poker company. In addition to the charges pending on behalf of the US Department of Justice, professional poker player and former Full Tilt Pro Phil Ivey is suing the company over the millions of dollars currently frozen in his FTP account.

Full Tilt Poker is certainly feeling the pressure to not only return players’ money, but also to get back into business. ARJEL, a French gaming regulator, has issued an ultimatum to the site: either allow French players to get online and play immediately, or suffer the consequences (in this case, we can assume that would mean that FTP would lose their licensing in France as well).

FTP has been attempting to negotiate a full or partial sale of the company since April 15, 2011, when the original attack from the US Justice Department commenced. While some investors are clearly still interested in salvaging a sinking ship, others reportedly lost all interest in Full Tilt Poker once the Alderney Gaming Control Commission (AGCC) shut down the site.

American poker star Jack Binion is rumoured to be the newest Full Tilt Poker investor, which could potentially work out in everyone’s favour, if the circumstances play out right. While sources state that Binion has been to Ireland to negotiate the acquisition of the company, nothing is certain at the moment.

The United States is currently looking down the barrel of some serious changes to online poker, thanks to a new bill proposed by Texas Representative Joe Barton, who is attempting to prove that not all Republicans are morally opposed to having fun. Barton, who is best known for his egregious errors when it comes to environmental responsibility and the way that science works, has introduced the Barton Bill, which is still a long way from becoming law. The bill, fully called the “Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2011” bill, or, as it’s more commonly called, H.R. 2366, would allow online poker to be available in the United States once more.

If the bill is passed into law, Jack Binion will be in an impressive position if he does, in fact, acquire Full Tilt Poker, as he will be fully equipped to relaunch the site from the United States, automatically making it the strongest contender for the US market.