There is a lot of news out of Full Tilt Poker this week and not a lot of it is encouraging. As it awaits its court date, now set for September 19, the site is losing investors and informing former U.S. members not to be too hopeful about seeing their seized funds refunded.
The news out of Full Tilt Poker just keeps getting bleaker. Their original July 26 court date having been adjourned, the new date is set for September 19 and has been moved to a new, larger location to allow more people to attend. It will now take place at 9 am on the Albert Embankment at the Riverbank Park Plaza Hotel in London.
In explanation for their inability to recover from the events of Black Friday as nimbly as their top rival Poker Stars has, FullTilt has been less than forthcoming. Finally, last Tuesday, they released a statement, strangely via Forbes.com, but it proved to be as unsatisfactory to many as their silence, simply stating they were unprepared for the government to enforce the laws FullTilt knew it was breaking. To add salt to the wound, Full Tilt blamed not only the unanticipated government crackdown and related cash account seizures but a theft by one of their payment processors.
The possibility for U.S. players who lost the money that was in their FullTilt accounts when the seizure happened of seeing their money back anytime soon seemed to hinge on FullTilt swaying new investors to help clean up its mess. But the latest word from the rumor mill is that the most likely contender for this role, some mysterious, unnamed investor, may have pulled out of negotiations with the site after hearing less-than-encouraging news from the U.S. Department of Justice.