Full Tilt Poker Accused Of Stealing $440 Million In Giant Ponzi Scheme

[goldman40]

hope they don't get a license back if they took the money

[pjesnik24]

All Australian sports books are similar. They also are heavily regulated and must have the liquidity to pay out all prospective wins.

well, the law requires them to have the funds available but look what happened to sportsalive in Australia

[yokspot]

Assuming this WASN'T a Ponzi scheme, then this US lawyer is doing a lot more harm than good in making sensationalist statements. Apparently two possible investors have already dropped out as a result. The argument that 100% ringfencing is unneccesary is pretty compelling. This might well amount to political point-scoring at the players' expense.

[k13]

I can guarantee that every poker room and sportsbook and online casino for that matter operates similar to this. If no crackdown had ever been put in place, nothing would of ever been exposed. Think about how much these poker rooms actually pay out in comparison to what gets deposited. In the grand scheme of things, how many poker players actually win? Sure as hell is not 50% like most people think. One guy loses $20 to this guy, this guy loses $40 to another guy and that guy drops $100 to a fourth guy. At the end of the day, the poker room only has to pay out one person and who is to say when or how much he cashes out. Odds are that the amount all four of them deposited wont have to be paid out for quite some time, if ever. Look at how much money was left in everyone's accounts. There are even people in this thread claiming thousands. To believe that any of these poker rooms or sportsbooks actually have dollar for dollar to payout is ludicrous. I believe in sports betting this problem is probably much much worse. In sports betting its documented that such and such a percent actually are winning bettors. What is it, in the 10% range. If books get 100 people depositing $100 each on a Sunday that’s $10,000. I could almost guarantee as a bookmaker you would be safe pocketing $8000 of that money if not more. With a website that has the volume and popularity of full tilt or any of these sportsbooks your almost safe pocketing the whole amount because each of these websites know that there are deposits coming tomorrow to cover the few winners there are today.
If anyone was SHOCKED that this type of thing actually existed in these poker room/sportsbooks I guess this is your wake up call. I think the only reason myself and everyone else should be shocked is because of the household names and some what gambling "celebrities" involved in the scam.
I make a deposit for the games I want to bet on the weekend each Friday and make the withdrawal Monday morning. Sure you may eat some fees, but at the end of the day the money stays real and in my hands and your not at risk of being buried if anything like this happens, and as we have seen it has and probably will keep on happening for the time to come until all of this is resolved.

Common knowledge that 90%+ of poker players are losing players. Easily found by databases.

[BET THE HOOK]

Wow what a mess. Glad I don't play poker.

[wrongturn]

Perhaps Ponzi Scheme is a wrong word on FTP case because they make money from rake, not only from new deposit, but what they did on player's fund is no difference to Madoff, lining up their own pockets like there is no tomorrow. If you want to know who can still pay fully on player's fund even under huge losses from doj raid, look no further than Neteller in 2007, and PokerStar and Bookmaker this year.

[pokerplayer22]

Ponzi scheme is definately the wrong terminology. Its outright theft!!

[marcojuiceman]

Who do you sports handicap with? Sounds Interesting

[marcojuiceman]

Sounds Like BetOnline is the same. Keep Depositing there and they will show you

[EmpireMaker]

not a Ponzi scheme just good old fashioned embezzlement