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There has been a Howard Lederer sighting after nearly one-and-a-half-years since his company, Full Tilt Poker, began to implode.
While Lederer has been making the online poker media rounds over the past month, pleading his case to anybody who will listen while blaming just about everyone else around him (minus “Howie” himself), the poker pro has yet to surface on the live poker scene since April 15, 2011.
That’s when the US Government essentially shut down Full Tilt Poker in the US, freezing dozens of bank accounts and indicting two other executives from the firm. Full Tilt Poker would eventually cease to exist later that summer.
Lederer, while not indicted, is accused of running an elaborate ponzi scheme post-Black Friday (the name designated to that April 15, 2011 date).
With rival PokerStars eventually coming to the rescue through its acquisition of Full Tilt Poker this summer, Lederer has built up enough confidence to show up for some video interviews (he would eventually start backing out of previously scheduled interviews).
Now that he’s gotten all of those demons lifted off his chest, it’s time to start playing some poker and pretending like none of this ever happened.
Don’t tell that to US Attorney Preet Bharara. He’s the man going after Lederer, the same guy who announced yesterday (October 9) a lawsuit against mega bank Wells Fargo for allegedly lying about the quality of the mortgages it handled under a federal housing program.
Howard can run but he can’t hide…..or he could just keep playing poker at Bobby’s Room.
As PokerFuse.com points out below: “What Happened to Howard Lederer being cash-poor?”
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From PokerFuse.com:
The infamous Bobby’s Room hosts some of the highest stakes cash games in the world. The website states that a minimum buy-in to sit at the table is $20k, although games have been known to run up to $4k/$8k and pots over $1m have been won.
Lederer’s presence in the game seemed curious for someone who inferred himself as being cash-poor in the wake of the 2011 Black Friday seizures, which have included ongoing civil forfeiture measures against Lederer himself for more than $40m. Without directly stating so in his two extended interviews, Lederer also implied that some of his bank accounts may have been frozen by the Department of Justice as part of the ongoing case.
Lederer also admitted not being willing to return some or all of his own distributions to the site before it ceased operations, despite his being (along with Ray Bitar) one of the two designated “managers” of the manager-controlled California LLC, Tiltware, that effectively ran Full Tilt.
- Ace King, Gambling911.com
