Card Player – On Wednesday, the Poker Players Alliance announced that the federal government and Garden City Group — the firm it hired to process all the Full Tilt Poker claims — are just “weeks away” from finally putting the money into the hands of victims.
According to reports, at least some of the money will be made through ACH deposit.
“I spoke with [Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section/Department of Justice] staff today and they informed me that they have approved approximately 30,000 undisputed player claims,” John Pappas, PPA’s executive director, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Garden City should be making a formal announcement on its website, fulltiltpokerclaims.com, within the next 24 hours. Players with undisputed claims should be looking for an email from Garden City Group within the next few weeks with instructions on how to receive their payment.”
The PPA added in a Tweet that the money amounts to $82 million, which is around half of what was stolen from players by the site while under prior ownership. These days Full Tilt Poker is under the same umbrella of ownership as industry-leading PokerStars.
The news is good for those with undisputed claims, but there are of course people who disputed the amount GCG said they were owed. No word on what is next for those players.
More than one million potential victims of Full Tilt Poker were identified in the initial processing of the data. The site shut down in 2011.
Once a dominant player in the U.S. market, Full Tilt was engulfed in the Black Friday indictments in the spring of 2011. Later the Department of Justice alleged that the firm was operating as a Ponzi scheme and paying its owners handsomely with the funds of players. All the former owners have settled their respective cases with the feds.
The news from the PPA comes after Garden City Group originally said that the cash outs would happen by Mar. 31, 2014. In other words, things are moving ahead of schedule.
