FULL TILT POKER AFTER BLACK FRIDAY

What poker rooms got affected by Black Friday, how were they affected, and where are they now (end of May 2012)? These three questions sum up the content of this second poker history article about Black Friday. Read the summary of Black Friday.

11 names were named in the Black Friday indictment and on behalf of TiltWare (Full Tilt Poker's parent company, from here on referred to only as Full Tilt Poker) this was Raymond Bitar (CEO) and Nelson Burtwick (Payments Director).

Full Tilt Poker had established themselves as the second largest online poker operator (after PokerStars) but Black Friday would mark the start of what seems to become the downfall of this Ireland based poker operator. Following the reopening of their dot com domain on April 20th Full Tilt Poker released the following statement about the agreement made with the DOJ and the payback of player funds:

“(..) In addition, the agreement represents an important first step towards returning funds to US players because it allows Full Tilt Poker to utilize its domain to facilitate the withdrawal of player funds. But, unfortunately, there remain significant practical and legal impediments to returning funds to players in the immediate future. As a result of the recent enforcement action, there exists no authorized US payment channel through which to make refunds; Full Tilt Poker has no accounting of the millions of dollars of player funds that were seized by the government; and the government has not agreed to permit any of the seized player funds to be returned to the players.”

To make matters worse, on June 29th the Alderney Gambling Control Commission stated that Full Tilt Poker's license would be suspended indefinitely, until they could provide a satisfying agreement to the terms of re-operation and plans to reissue player funds.

To this day player funds have yet to be released and the owners are accused of massive fraud. Read more about the Full Tilt scandal.