The Mirror: ‘Full Tilt Phantom Accounts May Result in Funds Shortfall’

The London Mirror featured a piece on Full Tilt Poker Friday, raising troublesome concerns over whether all players will see their funds.

US customers of Full Tilt Poker have been waiting since April 2011 to see any of their monies.  Millions of dollars are still owed.  Through an acquisition agreement with PokerStars, the US government agreed to pay back American players late last year via an independent claims administrator while Stars agreed to pay all outstanding accounts of non-Americans.  The process to date has been slow.

The US Justice Department is using the services of the Garden City Group.

The Mirror writes:

The GCG have created an FTP Claims Administration website, but so far have not sent out the emails they promise will start the claims process.

This issue has already resulted in a massive thread on the world’s largest online poker forum 2+2, which has over a quarter of a million views and over 3,000 written responses. The main complaint is in the GCG's vague use of language, and lack of clear communication regarding the timeline for the claims.

Even more worrying than the timeline though, is this statement from the GCG: “The calculation formula to be used for the Petition for Remission process will be based on players’ final balances with FTP as of April 15 2011.”

With many phantom transactions happening in and around April 15, including Full Tilt crediting players' without actually withdrawing the money from their bank accounts, there is no way of knowing if there will be enough funds to cover all the US Full Tilt account balances.

- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com