Keep in mind these are early reports on a breaking story, and nothing below is considered fact at this point in time.

The poker world is swirling with rumors that the deal between Groupe Bernard Tapie and Full Tilt Poker is off, but PokerStars has jumped into the fray and come to a deal with US Department of Justice that would see them purchase Full Tilt Poker and at the same time reach a financial settlement with the US DOJ.

According to the rumors, both sites will return to the online poker market and be run independently, and players at Full Tilt Poker will receive $330 million (100% of their funds). The further $420 million will apparently be used to settle up with the US Department of Justice.

There is no word on what this means for any of the indicted individuals at either Full Tilt poker or PokerStars.

As far-fetched as the possibility of this happening seems (an idea not even given a second’s notice yesterday) it is not out of the realm of possibility, considering the DOJ has settled with Party Poker back in 2008, as well as with Neteller.

The first hint of this came from an anonymous poster on 2+2 who posted the following early Tuesday morning in what is already an EPIC THREAD:

PokerStars has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to buy FTP. The things I heard:

* All players will be refunded 100%

* Both sites back online

* Both sites have promotions

* Employees remain in both places

Expect more news today.

Later the CEO of Chili Gaming, Alex Dreyfuss, posted the following breakdown of the deal on Twitter:

“Pokerstars buys FullTilt for a consideration of $750m, including settlement with DOJ and full balances of players (330m). I’m impressed.”

And even later in the day PokerFuse.com posted and article corroborating all of the rumors. The PokerFuse article verified through EGaming Review that the deal between Full Tilt poker and Groupe Bernard Tapie had indeed fallen through, saying:

“efforts to obtain final DoJ approval to acquire the assets of Full Tilt Poker have ended without success,” and that the deal was “sabbotaged,” according to iGamingFrance.

We will have a complete breakdown of what this deal might mean for players, and what the future of the two companies might be.

Tags: Anonymous Poster, Bernard Tapie, Breaking Story, Ceo, Chili, Department Of Justice, Dreyfuss, Early Tuesday, Egaming Review, Financial Settlement, Full tilt Poker, Online Poker, Party Poker, Point In Time, Poker World, PokerStars, Tuesday Morning, U S Department, Us Department Of Justice, What This Means

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 at 11:22 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.