Full Tilt under attack
Full Tilt Poker please for its gaming license
Even while sitting before the AGCC Full Tilt Poker comes under attack from lawyers in the US looking to recover millions of dollars of players money
The Department of Justice in the USA has raised the stakes in their war of words and lawsuits against Full Tilt Poker. At precisely the moment that the beleaguered poker site is fighting to retain their gaming license in front of the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) prosecution lawyers in New York claim that Full Tilt Poker is “nothing but a global Ponzi scheme”. The claim will strike deep into the heart of Americans who will not soon forget the massive Ponzi scheme concocted by Bernie Madoff to steal billions of dollars from people all over the world.
The suit brought against Full Tilt Poker by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) names poker personalities Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson and they have a wealth of damning allegations to prove in open court. The allegations include large scale counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering leaving people to speculate on the extent to which criminal charges are on their way. Despite owing their clients $300 million it is alleged that owners paid themselves a total of $440 million over a period of several years.
They managed to violate the 2006 law against online gambling by creating hundreds of front companies, companies that didn’t exist in a real sense but served to allow Full Tilt to funnel cash from players in the United States out of the country. It isn’t just Full Tilt Poker who have been accused of this by the DoJ. Any poker site operating in the United States would have had to have done much the same thing. That includes all of the leaders in the online poker industry.
The people who are really looking to cash in on the demise of the online poker sites are the huge corporations running live casinos. All along the Las Vegas strip casino executives are rubbing their hands as the DoJ takes away all of their potential competition. There is in fact a massive lobbying effort underway to have the law amended to allow Americans to gamble online once again. This lobby already has senators across the country proposing bills to legalise poker amongst other activities. This is why corporations such as MGM are opening free poker sites that give away large amounts of cash as well as expensive prizes as a reward for winning play. When poker is legalised these sites will simply switch to taking regular bets.
