[SBR Natalie]

Absolute Poker settlement prompts KGC statement

One more chapter has been written in the Black Friday online poker legal proceedings. Assistant US attorney Jason H. Cowley out of the Southern District of NY published a settlement order with Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet and related companies earlier last week. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission, who issued Blanca Games Inc. and in turn Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet's gaming licenses, addressed the settlement in a brief statement | Read more

[TheGuesser]

I hope it works out better for players than the BetOnSports fiasco, where players got $.04 on the dollar after about 5 years of waiting.

[venture]

So how long will this take? Who are the parties in line to get funds before players. How much is the USA government taking? What is a realistic % I can expect to get. Thanks

[mighty maron]

The money is gone from UB/AP. KGC is a paper tiger...nothing more

[Ian]

Wait a second.

Joe Norton was the nominal owner of UB & Absolute, and was the former head of the KGC as well as Chief of the Kahnawake Mohawks. Now the KGC is stating that Cereus customers can only get paid based on whatever assets Cereus claims to have left. This, by extension, means that Norton, the Kahnawake tribe, and the KGC get to keep all the money they made off of the Cereus network without paying a dime to the poker players who will likely take a gigantic "haircut" on whatever balances they are paid back.

This is even worse than it sounds for two reasons. First, there likely will be no assets once various lawsuits against Blanca Games are settled. They owe the equivalent of $30 million +penalties in unpaid Norwegian taxes (they were briefly licensed in Norway). They are also being sued by the district court of Northern Illiinois for a series of unrepaid loans totaling over $6 million, and Norwegian authorities have recently given a deposition in US court accusing UB/AP of defrauding shareholders out of a quarter billion dollars. Secondly, by any definition of the law, UB and AP committed fraud every time they accepted a deposit. Depositing customers were unknowingly duped into backing the company as investors. Poker players would lose their deposits if the company failed, but would not see any profits from UB/AP should the company turn a profit (as it always did). The KGC & Chief Norton presided over this fraud, and will face no consequences for it.

The whole situation stinks.

EDIT: If you want to check up on the facts about the situation I referred to above, check out post #43 of Haley Hintze's blog about her upcoming book on the UB/AP cheating scandal.

[JAKEPEAVY21]

smashing stuff, Natalie

love the UK accent!

[TheCentaur]

Natalie you said you would be coming out with videos on Tues and Fri. Well this week they came out Wed and Thurs. I like ur earrings.