Multiple waves of payments to former American customers of Full Tilt Poker have been confirmed via a pair of announcements released on Friday by Ohio-based Garden City Group (GCG), the claims administrator overseeing the process.
The first and largest population of players expected to receive refunds are likely to receive their funds electronically (via ACH), according to a GCG update at the site dedicated to the refund process, FullTiltPokerClaims.com. This group of about 30,000 players filed timely applications for remission, completing them before Nov. 16, 2013, and accepted the balance information that GCG and the Department of Justice had obtained from Full Tilt in the wake of that company’s post-Black Friday collapse.
The total amount of refunds in this category is also already known and announced by GCG, at approximately $82 million, which comprises a little more than half of the $160 million paid by PokerStars to the DOJ in 2012 in a complex settlement that allowed the refunds to occur. By the time the first refunds are issued, nearly three years will have elapsed since April, 2011’s Black Friday indictments against several large US-facing poker sites.
Not all of the roughly 30,000 players will receive their complete balances, however. For those players who have existing governmental debts as records by the US government’s Treasury Offset Program, which tracks everything from tax liens to civil judgments, players who owe the government any outstanding debt will have their refunds automatically reduced by that amount.
Other groups of players whose balances are disputed or whose status and relationship with the former FTP still face a longer wait before being reunited with their aged Full Tilt balances. One large group of players was forced to contest their recorded balances after finding that the totals shown by Garden City Group were smaller than many hundreds or a few thousand players believed existed, due to phantom withdrawals being debited against players’ accounts but never actually having been received by players, during Full Tilt’s final tumultuous weeks.
Two other groups face further examination as well — former affiliates and sponsored pros of the site. Both groups were deemed to have had “business relationships” with Full Tilt and were thus originally declared ineligible to receive refunds, based on the principle, as espoused by the DOJ, of having supported a fraudulent enterprise, as the old Full Tilt was declared.
However, a wave of complaints from affected players and an explanation of the loose business relationships common with Full Tilt forced the DOJ to reexamine the situation, as many affiliates were “name only” as a way of creating rakeback accounts, which received as much as 27% of their generated rake back as a rebate for playing on the site.
The DOJ, via Garden City Group, appears to have reiterated its stance that affiliate-based payments are ineligible for refunds, and they appear to have included “A2P” (affiliate-to-player) payments in their calculations, according to player protests quickly published on several prominent poker discussion forums.
The gist of that, assuming no further change by the DOJ in its interpretation, is that most players who successfully negotiated a 27% rakeback deal through connections with the site will lose that 27%, even retroactively, given that sufficient funds remain in their accounts. The unfairness of the move is evident, and can be traced to poor recordkeeping by the old Full Tilt, which likely tagged thousands of basic players as affiliates merely to enable rakeback deals to be paid.
According to the latest GCG update, as many as 8,400 player accounts fall into this category, and the group likely contains a disproportionate number of the larger balances of the site. As much as $80 million remains to be distributed to former Full Tilt players who have disputed balances or are former “affiliates” (actual or just rakeback-designated) and pros. Tens of millions of dollars in potential refunds may remain in the DOJ’s hands because of the interpretation.
The next deadline in the process is March 2nd, 2014 for the 8,400 or so affiliate accounts, who were given an extension in filing their refund petitions due to the disagreement over the interpretation of their former business relationship with Full Tilt. The situation remains likely to cause extensive controversy in the months ahead, even as other former American Full Tilters will finally be reunited with their online bankrolls, and can put a lingering dark memory to rest.
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