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		<title>Subject: Poker</title>
		<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com</link>
		<description>Poker news done right.</description>
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			<title>Goodbye from Subject: Poker</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Subject: Poker will not be publishing any more articles. Currently, Thomas Bakker and I are starting a poker security consulting company.1 As a result, I can no longer guarantee my independence as editor-in-chief. Subject: Poker&#8216;s founding principle is independence, so it would be inappropriate for me to continue Subject: Poker. The website will stay up with all articles intact for the foreseeable future, but it will naturally become a bit of a relic as time passes and no new articles are added. I hope that it will continue to prove a useful resource for the poker community. Diamond Flush has decided to start a new poker news site, Diamond Flush Poker. Diamond has been an incredible member of our team who&#8217;s written many of our most important articles, including the first story to mention Full Tilt&#8217;s french investor; our story correcting the AGCC&#8217;s false numbers; all stories related to the pending deal between GBT, FTP, and the DOJ; our recent story exposing Chris Ferguson&#8217;s secret bank accounts; and many others. DFP will be inheriting much of our data, sources, and research as well. We look forward to getting our news from there, and we recommend that our readers do the same. Subject: Poker&#8216;s farewell [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2012/02/goodbye/</link>
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			<title>Judge Dismisses Most of FTP Class Action</title>
			<description><![CDATA[On Monday, Judge Leonard Sand of the Southern District of New York dismissed many of the claims raised in a class action lawsuit against Full Tilt Poker, many of its companies, many of its owners, and others associated with the organization. The suit, which was originally filed on June 30th on behalf of all US players, lists thirteen individual defendants: Ray Bitar, Nelson Burtnick, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, and Patrik Antonius. (Phil Gordon was later dismissed with prejudice.) It also names nine companies associated with Full Tilt and lists 100 John Does to allow for more people and companies to be added in the future. It alleges that all defendants committed conversion and that Burtnick, Bitar, and various corporate entities violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Motions to dismiss are pretrial motions that ask the court to reject a case on purely legal grounds. A judge&#8217;s response to a motion to dismiss typically says nothing about the facts of the case, but rather merely says whether the plaintiff&#8217;s claims against the defendant, if true, would justify a legal remedy. The granting of a motion [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2012/02/judge-dismisses-ftp-class-actio/</link>
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			<title>Chris Ferguson&#8217;s Secret FTP Bank Accounts and Threats to GBT Deal</title>
			<description><![CDATA[From at least April of 2007, Chris Ferguson funnelled just under $60 million of his Full Tilt distribution payments into bank accounts held for him in the name of Pocket Kings Ltd,1 in addition to the roughly $25 million that the US Department of Justice reported that he received in their amended civil complaint. He successfully withdrew or spent about $45 million of this funnelled money, but about $14.3 million of it was used for Full Tilt&#8217;s post-Black Friday expenses, reportedly with his permission. In an attempt to recover this money, Ferguson and his lawyer, Ian Imrich, have threatened repeatedly to take steps that might impede the pending deal with the DOJ and Groupe Bernard Tapie. Ferguson&#8217;s Accounts Ferguson&#8217;s distributions were paid mostly into accounts that Pocket Kings held for him. These accounts were unambiguously controlled by him, and were typically referred to as &#8220;Chris&#8217;s accounts.&#8221; For example, his April 2007 distribution was about $1.3 million, $400,000 of which went to his personal account and about $900,000 of which went to a PK account. His March 2011 distribution was about $1.9 million, $600,000 of which went to his personal account and about $1.3 million of which went to a PK account. [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2012/01/chris-fergusons-secret-bank-accounts/</link>
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			<title>Superuser Scandal Victims Sue Old UB</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Correction posted 1/18/2011 12:18 AM EST. Eight poker pros and alleged victims of the Ultimate Bet superuser scandal have filed a civil suit against Excapsa Software, Inc., the company behind Ultimate Bet until 2006.1 The plaintiffs are Daniel &#8220;Ashman&#8221; Ashman, Brad Booth, Thomas &#8220;tommyboy83&#8243; Koral, Greg &#8220;Captain Zeebo&#8221; Laverly, Dave Lizmi, Daniel &#8220;King Dan&#8221; Smith, Joseph Sanders, and Dustin &#8220;Neverwin&#8221; Woolf. They claim to have together suffered damages of over $2,000,000, though the complaint only specifies the ownership of $1,734,863.50.2 The complaint argues that Ultimate Bet&#8217;s repayments to victims were inadequate and that the victims are entitled to a thorough accounting.3 It lists eight separate causes of action: violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act; conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act; conversion; interference with prospective economic advantage; intentional infliction of emotional distress; unfair business practices (as defined by California Business and Professions Code 17200-17210); fraud; and negligence. Because this is a civil RICO lawsuit, the plaintiffs ask for treble damages. They also request compensation for attorneys&#8217; fees, trebled costs of investigation, and $10 million in punitive damages. In addition to Excapsa, the complaint lists ten John Does as defendants, whom it identifies as unknown &#8220;owners, operators, officers, employees, and/or agents [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2012/01/superuser-lawsuit/</link>
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			<title>FTP and GBT Agree on Assets; DOJ Next in the Queue</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Subject: Poker can now confirm that Full Tilt Poker and Groupe Bernard Tapie have executed an agreement to further the transfer of FTP&#8217;s assets to GBT. This agreement was necessary to pave the way for the US Department of Justice to take possession of the assets voluntarily being forfeited by Full Tilt. This was the next step in the complicated process of transferring Full Tilt assets (by way of the US Department of Justice) to Groupe Bernard Tapie. It follows the November 17th agreement between DOJ and GBT that allows GBT to purchase forfeited FTP assets from the DOJ, likely via the Asset Forfeiture Fund, for an agreed-upon price of $80 million.  In return, GBT also agreed to repay or otherwise make whole non-US players, who are owed over $150 million. The DOJ has agreed to dismiss the civil complaints for forfeiture against the FTP companies when and if the forfeiture of the assets is complete.  The DOJ would then be responsible for Full Tilt&#8217;s liability to US players, which is also estimated to be about $150 million.1 Multiple sources report that Full Tilt&#8217;s ownership held a vote on this agreement, and owners representing a majority of shares agreed to the deal. Any current [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/12/ftp-gbt-agree/</link>
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			<title>Elie, Campos Argue Motion to Dismiss</title>
			<description><![CDATA[On December 1, oral arguments were heard in Manhattan Federal Court before NY Federal Judge Lawrence Kaplan, in the motion to dismiss the UIGEA, IGBA, and fraud charges facing two of those criminally charged on Black Friday. Before a gallery full of prosecutors, attorneys, law enforcement and journalists (including Subject: Poker), attorneys for John Campos and Chad Elie challenged the legality of the charges facing their clients. Judge Kaplan has yet to rule on the motion, but seems very unlikely to dismiss all of the charges. He told the parties to proceed as if they were going to trial.1 Campos, former Vice Chairman of the Board and part owner of SunFirst Bank in Utah, is alleged to have given approval on behalf of the bank to process over $200 million in transactions for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. In return, he allegedly solicited a $10 million investment into the failing bank and a finder&#8217;s fee for himself. According to court documents, the bank earned about $1.6 million in fees for this processing before it was ordered to stop by the FDIC late in 2010. Elie is the payment processor charged with allegedly using Campos and Sunfirst to handle transactions on behalf of PokersStars [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/12/elie-campos-motion-dismiss/</link>
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			<title>Large Amounts of Personal Data Leaked from UB (Update: Site down)</title>
			<description><![CDATA[A large amount of personal data about UB players has been leaked. The data, which was posted publicly on the internet, appears to contain information about every player with an account at Ultimate Bet. Subject: Poker estimates that roughly 3.5 million accounts are affected. Accounts on UB&#8217;s sister site, Absolute Poker, are not included. The leaked data includes the following: Full name Screen name E-mail address Phone number Mailing address Account balance IP address Deposit methods used (e.g. &#8220;echeck&#8221;) Birth date Account number (unique identifier for UB accounts, not bank accounts numbers) VIP status Affiliate status Blacklist status A link to the data was posted on the Two Plus Two Poker Forums by an anonymous poster who removed the link eight minutes later. This is the only such public posting that we know of, but in that brief time period, enough people saw the link that it is currently being passed around privately. Subject: Poker confirmed the accuracy of the data against known information. For example, the author&#8217;s private information is included and correct (though it is now outdated). We looked up a small number of known accounts, and we were unable to find anyone with a UB account whose personal details [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/12/ub-data-leak/</link>
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			<title>BREAKING: DOJ and GBT Ink Their Deal, FTP/GBT Next in the Queue</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Following the longest two and a half weeks for online poker players since Black Friday, Subject: Poker can confirm that the US Attorney&#8217;s Office for the Southern District of New York, and Group Bernard Tapie have signed their letter agreement, allowing for the acquisition of the assets of Full Tilt Poker by GBT once FTP have inked their side of the agreement. Mr. Behn Dayanim, the Washington, D.C. attorney for GBT in this matter, offered the following statement to Subject: Poker: We have an executed letter agreement with the Department of Justice that would allow GBT to purchase the Full Tilt assets from the United States. This is the first step in a process that will require agreement of the Full Tilt companies to the forfeiture of those assets and execution of a definitive agreement with the Department. Mr. Jeff Ifrah, Full Tilt&#8217;s attorney, echoed Dayanim&#8217;s enthusiasm with the following comment also made to Subject: Poker: The historic agreement between DOJ and GBT lays out the terms of sale, requires GBT to reimburse ROW players, and details the procedure proposed to reimburse US players. But there is still work to do and of course important questions remain. When will the assets be forfeited [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/11/doj-gbt-ink/</link>
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			<title>FTP Issues Statement Re: GBT/DOJ Agreement</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Full Tilt gave Subject: Poker the following statement earlier today: Full Tilt Poker is pleased that the terms of the agreement between Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) and the Department of Justice have been finalized, and that the agreement provides forGBT to repay or make whole players outside of the United States and provides a mechanism for U.S. players to get repaid.Since Black Friday, repaying customers has been FTP’s number one priority. Ray Bitar, co-Founder and CEO of Full Tilt Poker stated: “I am extremely pleased with the efforts of the Department of Justice, and the Groupe Bernard Tapie corporation, and appreciate their continued dedication in working towards a mutually beneficial agreement that will facilitate repayment of the players .” Now that the agreement with DOJ has been reached, GBT and Full Tilt Poker will now turn to memorializing the final terms of their agreement, to bring this matter to a complete resolution as soon as possible. Full Tilt Poker would like to thank all its customers for their continued patience since Black Friday and during this negotiation process. See today&#8217;s other article for more information.]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/11/ftp-issues-statement-re-gbtdoj-agreement/</link>
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			<title>BREAKING: GBT and DOJ Strike Deal, FTP Sale Pending</title>
			<description><![CDATA[After weeks of waiting, Subject: Poker can confirm that Groupe Bernard Tapie and the US Department of Justice have come to terms that allow GBT&#8217;s acquisition of Full Tilt Poker to continue. If FTP&#8217;s current shareholders agree to acquisition of their company, this deal with the DOJ will provide for payment of all players worldwide. Multiple sources have confirmed to S:P that the following email went out this morning to Tiltware shareholders from Ray Bitar: Dear members, I am pleased to announce that today the Department of Justice and Groupe Bernard Tapie have reached an agreement in principle regarding the acquisition of the companies comprising FullTiltPoker. My understanding is the deal provides that in exchange for an agreed upon payment by GBT, and a GBT commitment to assume responsibility for payment of ROW players, DoJ will reimburse US players and settle the outstanding civil litigation with the companies comprising FTP. Beyond these conditions, issues like the time frame and process for repayment of players remain unclear at this point and time. With DoJ&#8217;s consent now in hand, GBT may now proceed to finalize an agreement to acquire the companies or assets that comprise FTP.  That agreement will very likely address [...]]]></description>
			<link>http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/11/breaking-gbt-doj-deal/</link>
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