Black Friday

by Wendeen H. Eolis

 No sooner than Laurent Tapie hit the send button on an email to employees of Pocket Kings (a Full Tilt Poker company) explaining that discussions to acquire FTP had gone down in flames, word began to spread like wildfire of another suitor for the online poker site—FTP’s longtime arch rival, PokerStars.

Tapie Deal Goes South

 As previously reported, Tapie’s repayment plan to refund non U.S. “Rest Of World” (ROW) customers was a bone of contention in Group Bernard Tapie’s negotiations with the DOJ during the past few months.

Enter PokerStars

by Wendeen H. Eolis

No sooner than Group Bernard Tapie announced its failure to acquire the Full Tilt brand--after months of up and down negotiations with the United States Department of Justice--word spread across the internet of another suitor for the online site, its arch rival Poker Stars.

As previously detailed, first, in Poker Player Newspaper, the credibility and timeliness of Tapie's repayment plan to refund ROW customers became a bone of contention in  its negotiations with the DOJ  during the past few months.
 
According to Behn Dayanmim, however, the DOJ did not show its hand--other negotiations in progress--while pushing Tapie to make full repayment of  foreign "ROW" player account balances faster than desired by the company. In early April--at the eleventh hour, the DOJ brought down the hammer on Tapie's recalcitrance in ponying up full  refunds to all ROW players-- within ninety days of consummation of the acquisition.  
 
Dayanim was plainly annoyed by the DOJ's sudden hard-nosed position on the timing of refunds to players, explaining, "Most former FTP customers would have seen their monies fully refunded almost immediately." On questioning, Dayanim acknowledged  "Players with larger balances would likely not have received full repayment for an extended period." Could it have been more than two years? Dayanim said, "Yes." 
 
"The timetable for repayment of ROW funds had been a critical of concern to the DOJ for months," say lawyers familiar with with the wrangling over this point between Tapie and DOJ.   "Tapie ultimately showed its colors when push came to shove," according to one lawyer close to multiple protagonists involved in the final weeks of the deal making process. 

by Haley Hintze

NEW JERSEY ONLINE-POKER BILL  NEW JERSEY ONLINE-POKER BILL CLEARS COMMITTEE

 A reworked online-poker bill is back on the legislative agenda for New Jersey politicians, and the latest edition recently cleared New Jersey’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee by a 12-0 vote. The bill joins numerous measures up for general budget debate, and will face votes before New Jersey’s full House and Senate before moving on to a possible signing by Gov. Chris Christie, who vetoed an earlier measure. The latest bill is sponsored by state Senators Raymond Lesniak and James Whelan, who fronted earlier attempts to expand gambling in the state.

 THIRTY CONFIRMED FOR WSOP’S BIG ONE FOR ONEDROP

by Haley Hintze

SPORTINGBET MAKES FINAL PAYMENT TO US AND NEGOTIATES WITH FOXWOODS

 With an eye toward partnering with Connecticut’s Foxwoods Casino and reentering any future US online poker markets, the UK-based online gambling firm made the last of three installment payments to American prosecutors. SportingBet agreed to this deal in 2011 to avoid prosecution for its pre-UIGEA business with US customers. SportingBet’s final $6 million payment brought the total paid to the US government to $33 million. This leaves the company free to work with American casinos on future projects. The talks with Foxwoods come as that major East Coast casino faces a $2 billion debt, along with increased competition from neighboring states and an increasing possibility of casino gaming coming to neighboring Massachusetts.

By Lou Krieger

The government’s planned prosecution of Utah banker John Campos hit a road block of sorts, when US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered prosecutors to explain in writing why they let former Utah banker John Campos plead guilty to a misdemeanor instead of a felony, and avoid a trial scheduled for April 9. When Judge Kaplan blocked the guilty plea, he said he needed to know why the government was walking away from the case.

By Wendeen H. Eolis

Down the boardwalk from the recent World Series of Poker Circuit event in Atlantic City, a troop of online poker forum contributors—“ARGERS”—were whooping it up at the annual ATLARGE banquet.  The dinner was sponsored by PokerStars. The keynote speaker was John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance.

by Haley Hintze

 EPL PARENT ANNOUNCES BANKRUPTCY PLANS
 Epic Poker League’s parent company, Federated Sports & Gaming’s plans for a lengthy run suffered a severe setback when executive director Jeffrey Pollack announced they would be seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after lavish expenditures left the new operation awash in red ink. With only three events under its belt and its fourth tourney and season-ending freeroll already delayed, prospects for EPL’s survival appear dim, though not impossible. One known EPL investor, Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc., allegedly entered buyout talks, while the semi-autonomous Heartland Poker Tour, a new part of the FS&G family, was expected to continue with no change in plans.

by Wendeen H. Eolis

This morning, Group Bernard Tapie Counsel Behn Dayanim spoke to Poker Player Newspaper, reconfirming his renewed “significant confidence in the prospects of completing the deal” for his client to acquire the Full Tilt brand.  He notes, “It could occur before the end of the first quarter.” Dayanim makes clear, however, there are still a multitude of integrated issues that need to be buttoned up in the final stretch and it is more important now than ever to work through that process patiently.    

Meanwhile, the sequence of  recent events—since  Dayanim’s  disclosures last month of several players’ indebtedness  to FTP and since PPN’s identification of substantial additional roadblocks to closing a deal— have been fast moving.  

By Wendeen H. Eolis

Any poker player worth his salt knows better than to say, “When I win, it is skill, and when I lose, it is luck,” but until the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, by and large, the poker community ignored the significant legal conundrums now playing out as high drama in the US Department of Justice’s vigorous prosecution of online poker.

By Shari Geller
 
According to LegalPokerSites.com, Mississippi State Representative Bobby Moak introduced MS House Bill 1373 on Wednesday making Mississippi the latest state to consider regulation and legalization of online poker.  The bill, also called the Mississippi Lawful Internet Gaming Act of 2012, is designed to create a legislative framework for the establishment online gambling within the state.