In another bizarre update to the current Full Tilt Poker and GBT. It also appears that Matusow is not alone in owning Full Tilt money. In an interview with PokerUpdate, Groupe Benard Tapie’s lawyer Behn Dayanim claimed that players such as Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, Layne Flack and Erick Lindgren all owe Full Tilt Poker money. At one point it seemed like there was no updates at all about the FTP and GBT buyout scenario and now it seems to be that the updates never stop. It also appears that Matusow is not alone in owning Full Tilt money as GBT claims that players such as Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, Layne Flack and Erick Lindgren all owe Full Tilt Poker money.
In his twitter Matusow claims, “for all my fans out there just to let u all know I don’t owe full tilt anything why my name is mentioned I don’t know,” but GBT responds that Matusow does indeed owe nearly $700k and any attempts to reach Matusow have not been returned. Tapie has claimed that former Full Tilt players deserve to know how their money was used and how much was used and potentially lost by former FTP pros. Tapie has also called for those former big name pros to “honour” their debts and prove to the poker world that true professionals honor their debts in what he calls ‘the basic rules’ of professional gambling.
As previously stated, Barry Greenstein owes Full Tilt Poker money to the subject of $300,000 USD. In a post on twoplustwo, Barry went on to detail that he does indeed owe the money and fully intends to pay it back. However, he further states that he will pay it back to the DOJ’s fund to restore lost American funds rather than to GBT itself. This was met with mixed reviews with some Americans viewing this news as good, but the rest of the world made the point that Barry borrowed the money from FTP and as such he should not get to pick and choose where the money goes as that money was borrowed from the whole of FTP, not just the American part of Full Tilt Poker.
Earlier in the past calendar year Subject:Poker stated both Phil Ivey and David Benyamine owed FTP money and perhaps this GBT claim verifies Subject:Poker’s information. Subject:Poker had claimed David Benyamine owed Full Tilt Poker some unspecified amount and that perhaps Phil Ivey could owe as much as $6.1 million. Subject:Poker did however acknowledge that it was possible that both players had settled their debts but this new claim from GBT seems to lean towards that not being the case.
Certainly this bodes poorly for former Full Tilt Poker players as GBT has claimed this could seriously hamper any attempts to finalize a deal with FTP. GBT has stated that in the process of the diligence of FTP, that finances were far worse than expected. With the previously stated hope that Bovada Poker could be up and running by March 1st 2012, it seems even more likely that a deal may never get done. Most Full Tilt Pros named in the above list have remained completely silent about their debts with the exceptions of Greenstein and Matusow, so as always all we former players can do is wait to see what happens next.