Lawyers for Full Tilt Poker have fired back at the US Justice Department following the leveling of civil charges against the former online gaming giant. This past week, the lawkeeping agency accused Full Tilt of running a “Ponzi scheme” which fed approximately $440 million to founders Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson.
“While the government has obviously taken issue with the underlying activities of FTP,” Full Tilt attorney Ian Imrich retorted, “under any reasonable interpretation, the world-wide operations of the online cardroom are not a so-called Ponzi scheme.”
Beyond the initial accusations, Full Tilt is also suspected of cheating customers out of some $300 million. Jeff Ifrah, another lawyer in the poker company’s brood, refuted the wording of the Justice Department’s attack.
“A Ponzi scheme,” he said, “requires an investment vehicle in order to receive a certain rate of high return. None of those things happened here…. Maybe it was mismanaged.”
No matter how the semantics of the situation are presented, the bottom line is that Bovada is in deep trouble. The company is facing a potential buyout by outside investors, a hearing over its suspended operating license, and thousands of angry customers across the globe. Most of the company’s former players have not been able to cash out their bankrolls, a complication which has all but doomed their hope of continued patronage.