Sources Report Little Progress in Full Tilt Repayment Process

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Monday, May 27th, 2013 | Written by Stephen Smith

Less-than-encouraging news for former customers of Full Tilt Poker from the U.S., as sources indicate that the process of returning bankrolls to customers is stuck in something of an administrative limbo.

US player balances a part of PokerStars settlement

Before the latest updates on the situation, a quick bit of background regarding how it came to be.

The US government took on the responsibility of returning Full Tilt Poker account balances to American players as part of a larger Black Friday deal with PokerStars.

PokerStars took control of Full Tilt Poker following the conclusion of that deal.

But while PokerStars refunded the balances of FTP’s international customers after taking over at Full Tilt, a condition of the agreement required PokerStars to remit funds to cover the total balances of American players at Full Tilt Poker to the US Department of Justice, who is now in charge of the process of returning those funds to players.

The DoJ is working with the Garden City Group to facilitate the remission process.

Confusion over remission process remains

The remission process (as the DoJ formally refers to it) seems like a simple enough endeavor on face: Find out who had what balances, and return those balances to those individuals. While record-keeping at Full Tilt Poker probably wasn’t the strictest, a list of player balances shouldn’t be too difficult to come by, right?

But the actual process has been far more complicated. Here are just a few of the areas where ambiguity and confusion exist:

Should players get winnings or deposits? By far the most controversial issue, at least from a player perspective. One position inside the DoJ is that if playing online poker is illegal, then the DoJ would be tacitly endorsing an illegal activity by returning proceeds from an illegal activity to players.
How should “ghost” deposits be handled? Full Tilt Poker credited players with millions in deposits that the site never actually collected. Identifying these deposits and determining how to treat them is a thorny issue that will probably lack a resolution pleasing to all parties involved.
What standards should be used to validate player balances? While balance tracking may have been fairly complete at Full Tilt Poker, the site fell into chaos in the immediate aftermath of Black Friday. Sorting out that chaos and establishing the right standards for assigning the right balance to the right player can’t be an easy job.

Timeframe for return of US funds continues to expand

American customers of Full Tilt Poker haven’t had access to the funds in their account since right around April 15th, 2011, when Black Friday changed the face of US online poker. We’re now two years past that date.

International players were able to fully access their balances when Full Tilt Poker relaunched in November of 2012. How much long are American players likely to wait?

The answer won’t be a popular one, but it appears that the remissions process could easily stretch out well into 2015.

Remember, we’re still at a stage where the DoJ is working out the basic formula for calculating player balances. That’s a fairly early stage of what is inherently a long, complex and highly-bureaucratic process. Getting money to players will be a significant undertaking in and of itself, and we’re still apparently months away from that kicking off.

The takeaway for Full Tilt’s former American players seems to be: Want your money back? Then hurry up and wait.