Full Tilt Poker is labeled by authorities as “a global Ponzi scheme”

In a scathing statement released earlier this week, the United States attorney responsible for prosecuting the online poker site Full Tit Poker delivered shocking news to the online poker community. According to the statement, lawyers have concluded that the company and individuals behind Full Tilt Poker have been operating dishonestly and deceiving customers as well as the public, not just in the United States, but in Canada, Europe, and all other locations where the sites’ services were offered. Bluntly put, Full Tilt was labeled “a global Ponzi scheme” that took advantage of fans’ trust in the site to steal hundreds of millions of dollars.

Online poker players have been asking for months when they’ll see their money, and the truth of the matter is this: the money is gone. According to the official statement from the American government, Full Tilt knowingly allowed poker players to deposit funds into their account when, in fact, no money actually exchanged hands. This went on for quite some time, racking up ever-increasing deficits that could never be paid back because the money simply wasn’t where it needed to be. In all, Full Tilt is alleged to have owed its players around $390 million, with only $60 million on hand to actually honour that debt. The site still owes players an estimated $300 million worldwide.

What makes this even more shocking to fans is that much of that money went right into the pockets of the site’s owners. After the Department of Justice seized the company’s assets and investigated further, it became clear that between 2007 and April 2011, right up until the moment the site was shut down, the owners of Full Tilt took nearly $440 million for themselves.

In light of these revelations, prosecutors are seeking to charge Full Tilt’s owners with civil money laundering and will ask for all funds they paid to themselves to be forfeited. If and when that money is handed over to authorities, it may become possible to dole it out to the players it belongs to. But there’s no telling how long such a process could end up taking.

source: WWW.POKER.CA

About Great Canadian Female Poker Champions

Recently I found great article about female Canadian poker players. I admit that I think the same way all of those bad males are thinking.

It is fair to say that poker is a male-dominated world. Though there are thousands of excellent female poker players sitting side-by-side the men, they tend to be looked at as a pretty little accessories rather than the determined, worthy competitors that they are. More fool the men, though, because these little ladies are a force to be reckoned with. Take professional female poker player Xuan Liu. This particular pretty face bluffed her way through to finish an extremely impressive third place in the EPT San Remo this year – a huge step up from her 31st place at the 2007 British Columbia Poker Championships and coming 69th in the 2010 NLHE Ladies Championship. This Toronto native is more than enough example of how female poker players are taking this still patriarchal world by storm, but she isn’t the only one. Fellow Canadian Dinara Khaziyeva’s most recent competitions left her 16th place (no Limit Hold’ Em) and 11th place (Ladies No Limit Hold’ Em) in the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza 3 in June after landing a very impressive 6th place in Season 9 of the WPT Celeb Invitational.

Another fair face hailing from Quebec is Isabelle Mecrier. This gorgeous girl’s notable professional poker credentials such as winner of the WPT Ladies Night Out Championships as well as impressive finishes in tonnes of other poker tourneys has left this girl ranked 19th in the world of female poker pros and earned here the nickname “No Mercy.”

I think you’ll agree that all of these female poker players present a real threat to the men of professional online poker, which is exactly why these ladies crave their status as worthy adversaries to be the focus of attention rather than their admittedly good looks. Professional poker is a tough and extremely competitive world already without these women having to struggle to be taken seriously. These ladies should be celebrated for flying the flag for female poker players worldwide and it is about time that they are recognised as serious competitors rather than being treated as pretty faces on the side lines.

source: gregdemcy.net

March trial for two men charged in online poker shutdown case

A judge in New York said this week that two defendants (out of twelve) in the online poker shutdown case that saw sites like Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, and Absolute Poker brought under a legal microscope, will likely face a trial in March 2012. The other ten defendants named in the case likely will not be facing a trial. About half those men were never actually arrested due to being overseas, and others will be able to settle the charges without going to trial. The two men who will likely face a trial are John Campos and Chad Elie, the two American men charged with processing financial transactions for the three named online poker companies. These transactions were dubbed illegal in 2006 due to a major change in U.S. law. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, but the judge said a complete dismissal of the entire indictment was “extraordinarily unlikely.”

source: POKER.CA

Great article on http://canadianatheist.com about poker crackdown

The rise of religious conservatism across North America has resulted in an increasingly harsh stance on gambling – especially online poker. In April of this year, the United States government cracked down on some of the largest online poker companies in the world, using flimsy legal justification for what was obviously an attack on the freedom to choose one’s own values, regardless of what the dominant religion of the country may be. (Read more here about the legal arguments involved.) Americans who chose to gamble were punished – the money they had tied up in the affected online poker sites was confiscated by the Department of Justice, and tens of thousands of people lost their main source of income, their careers, and their livelihoods. Professional online poker players who chose to make a career doing what they loved, by doing what they excelled at, were in effect punished for not subscribing to dominant Christian values. In a nation where gambling is viewed as a sin – a sin so obvious and unquestionable that creating a law to forbid it seems as natural as outlawing theft or murder – by the majority, the minority is denied the right to arrive at its own conclusions. Those who saw no moral conflict in gambling, those who saw no problem with enjoying a game that also allowed them to support their families, were in effect invalidated by a conservative law strongly influenced by religion. Atheists in America are expected to conform to the dominant conservative belief system, which is enforced by law instead of by personal choice. Where is the personal liberty and freedom that Americans claim to hold so dear? We face a similar situation in Canada as well. While online poker has not been completely outlawed on a federal level, it remains ambiguous and in a legal grey area that politicians lack the courage to clarify. By seeking to officially legalize online gambling in general and online poker in particular, public officials risk alienating the conservative religious folk who adamantly refuse to accept that people have a right to choose how they spend their free time. They believe gambling is a sin, and therefore no one should be allowed to participate in it, period. Where is the logic in that? A secular nation, as both the U.S. and Canada claim to be, has no place policing its citizens based on illogical religious values. Banning theft makes sense – stealing harms society by jeopardizing trust and cooperation between neighbors and communities. Banning murder makes sense as well, for much the same reason – it jeopardizes our ability to live together in peace. But banning gambling, a quiet activity that brings joy to many peaceful, productive citizens’ lives – that makes no sense at all to those who reject antiquated religious values. Atheists in Canada have as much right to gamble and play online poker in their spare time as religious Canadians do to read the Bible when they’re not busy. Atheists may not see the point of such an activity, and they may even think it could be potentially harmful to the person engaging in it, but it’s not their place to tell another person what he or she can and can’t do based on personal convictions. Yet in a world increasingly populated with fundamentalists of all stripes around the globe, this message of tolerance is sure to be lost.

source: canadianatheist.com

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