Out of the clear blue sky the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced they had settled on a claims administrator to handle the remission for affected US poker players stemming from Black Friday, and outlined in the settlement they reached with PokerStars last year. According to the press release from the US Attorney:

“Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that the United States has retained the Garden City Group (“GCG”) to serve as Claims Administrator to oversee the process of compensating eligible victims of the fraud committed by Full Tilt Poker against United States players that was set forth in both the civil money laundering and forfeiture action United States v. PokerStars, et al., and the indictment United States v. Bitar, et. al.”

Since April 15, 2011 US poker players have been unable to access their money from their Full Tilt Poker accounts, and even after the DOJ and PokerStars came to an agreement last summer, it has been a further nine months before this important step in the process was taken.

The anti-gambling crusader was still using hyperbolic language to describe Full Tilt Poker despite all of the settlements and agreements that have been made, as Preet Bharara was quoted in the press release as saying, “The Garden City Group brings a track record of handling the administration of some of the country’s largest and most complicated settlements. With their selection, we take a significant step forward in the process of compensating victims of the Full Tilt Poker scheme.” [bold mine]

This means that US players should be contacted soon with an explanation of the remission process and how they can go about filing a claim for their Full Tilt Poker funds: “Utilizing funds forfeited from PokerStars in this action, the Department of Justice will establish a process by which eligible U.S. fraud victims will be able to seek compensation for their losses (“Petitions for Remission”).”

You can read the full press release here: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/March13/FullTiltPokerSpecialMasterPR.php

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 13th, 2013 at 5:51 pm 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.