Full Tilt Poker Faces A Sea Of Troubles
George | July 2, 2011
The world has not been kind to Full Tilt Poker over the past two months. Once one of the largest online poker sites, it faced disaster on Black Friday when the United States Justice Department seized its website and charged it with money laundering, bank fraud, and illegal gambling. Player accounts were frozen, and since then, Full Tilt Poker players have yet to see their funds returned.
Adding to its woes, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC), the regulating agency for the British Channel Islands where Full Tilt was registered, revoked the site’s eGambling license on June 29. This action barred Full Tilt from taking on new clients, accepting or releasing money from current clients, and allowing any form of poker, including free poker, on their site. The company’s owners scrambled to sell Full Tilt to a buyer willing to bail them out, as over $150 million in US player funds needed to be paid, alongside extensive legal costs.
Class action lawsuit
Following Full Tilt’s announcement of a potential sale to undisclosed “European investors,” reports surfaced of a mass exodus from the website. Players, having endured enough, were unwilling to wait any longer. A class action lawsuit was filed against Full Tilt in a US District Court in New York, targeting the company and numerous employees and professional players, including Full Tilt Pro Phil Ivey, who had dropped his own suit against Full Tilt just 36 hours earlier. The lawsuit accuses Full Tilt Poker of a “pattern of racketeering” and “wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering.” An employee described the company as being in a state of bewildered chaos since Black Friday.
PokerStars, also named in the original suit by the US Department of Justice, has distanced itself from Full Tilt. They issued a press statement and repeatedly assured the media that Full Tilt’s issues were isolated. This strategy appears to have worked, as PokerStars has claimed 59% of the players who left Full Tilt.
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