The online gambling website Full Tilt Poker has been having a rough year. At the start of 2010, Full Tilt Poker was looking at a yearly average of $500 million in revenue and seeing $100 million in profit. Now Federal prosecutors are saying Full Tilt Poker has only $60 million in its bank accounts, while owing $390 million to players around the world, with $150 million in the States. It’s looking like CEO Ray Bitar and his poker celebrity partners, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, have some explaining to do.
Full Tilt Poker and its main competitors, Poker Stars and Absolute Poker, first made big headlines in April when the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, filed a $3 billion civil lawsuit against them. The lawsuit claims that both online poker companies laundered their customers’ money buy disguising it as payments through fake online stores. The suit claims that Ray Bitar, CEO of Full Tilt Poker has set up online stores solely to divert portions of his customers’ money through and into his, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and other company partners’ personal accounts. A federal judge has in-turn used a restraining order on 76 bank accounts in 14 countries.
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