FTP attorney Barry Boss gave the following statement to diamondflushpoker.com:
“To address issues reported today in the media and on blogs, Full Tilt Poker confirms that its agreement with Groupe Bernard Tapie has in fact been terminated. Despite this development, Full Tilt Poker is more optimistic than ever that its number one goal will be obtained: Full Tilt players will be repaid. Full Tilt Poker has been in settlement discussions with the US Department of Justice. As such settlement discussions are always confidential, we are unable to comment on any rumors related to the details of those discussions. As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so."
Here are the early plans concerning paying back players outside the US:
All players that had less than $100 on their accounts would have instantly received this amount. According to some sources, this means 95% percent of the players in the US. This makes a total $16,000,000.
However, the remaining 5% would have been a completely diferent case, as the money owed to these players makes a grand total of $168,000,000.
All players with a balance under $500 belongs to the "standard player" category.
Players with $500 to $10,000 belong to "silver players" category.
"Gold category" members have more than $10,000 stuck in FTP.
It is true for all players in the above mentioned categories, that in order to withdraw more than $100, they would have had to comply with serious wagering requirements. The requirements are not clear, butb they would have used the players' 2011 activity to determine how much money they could start with. And after generating serious amounts of rake, more money would have been available to them. Although agreements have been made that all money would have been paid back in two years, many accounts would have been left empty because of the serious requirements.
Even those players who had six or seven-digit amounts on their accounts, would have only had $100 to start with.
The returning players would have had to accept the above requirements in order to have at least a chance to recover their money.
The new plans:
The above screenplay was unaccpetable for both FTP and the DoJ, as it was not fair with FTP players. Because of thism it went through several modifications before the deal was blown off.
One of the modifications: The GBT wanted the players outside of the US to ask for the money from the DoJ, and the GBT would have paid back the DoJ afterwards. It has not been confirmed, but it is plausible that these players would have only received their deposits and not their winnings or profit in any way.
When these amendments got rejected, new ideas came. The details were not really clear, all the GBT said was that the non-US players would have been paid back within 5 years, either in money or in packages worth the same amount. Non-Us players would have been forced to accept this option.
Another piece of information not really known by anyone is that although the GBT agreed to pay $80 million to the DoJ, they actually only wanted to pay $60 million, and have the rest paid by another investor. However, they were in negotiations with a third investor at this point, and the two did not know about each other. And just to make things clear: none of these investors included the new applicant, who will soon settle with FTP and the DoJ."
So, this is what poker insider diamondflushpoker seems to know about the issue. We will keep you updated on any new developments!
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