About 1,900 online poker players in the U.S. are in line to receive roughly $5.5 million this month in the Full Tilt remission process.
The Garden City Group, the firm handling the claims, posted the information on the official website yesterday. That followed an announcement on social media a few days earlier by Poker Players Alliance (PPA) executive director John Pappas.
Interestingly enough, Pappas’ posting indicated that 2,000 players would be receiving $5.7 million. The numbers are a bit off between the two announcements, but the fulltiltpokerclaims.com website info trumps that of the PPA boss. Pappas stated that he spoke to his contact at the DoJ and relayed the unofficial tally afterward.
The latest batch of payments will arrive in the bank accounts of players within a few weeks, well in time for the Christmas holidays. And reimbursement also comes at a time when U.S. online poker players can take advantage of some nice deposit bonuses available at U.S.-friendly poker sites.
Only 8% of Claimants Unpaid
The payments in the just announced wave are headed to players identified as professionals, those whose account balances were in dispute, as well as players with confirmed account balances. Following reimbursement via ACH, 92% of all petitioners will have been made whole since the first batch was issued on February 28, 2014.
According to Pappas, only 3,800 claims remain to be processed. As of yet there is no indication when those players will receive their outstanding funds. The wait has been 4 and 1/2 years, so a few more months likely won’t matter much to the former Full Tilt players.
This latest batch will mark the 7th payout distribution, with roughly $110 million doled out to more than 40,000 players. It’s been a long and tiresome process, but well worth the wait for those who had money stuck on Full Tilt when the hammer came down on Black Friday in 2011.
Excess Funds
With the remission process nearly complete, it is evident that millions of dollars will go unclaimed. About $184 million was set aside to pay U.S. FTP players when PokerStars purchased the site in 2013.
Only $110 million of that is gone with 92% of petitioners paid. Where will the excess funds go? It appears the DoJ will be the beneficiary after paying the GCG for their claims administration services.
I would recommend that the DoJ use the funds to pay UltimateBet and Absolute Poker players who got shafted when the Cereus Network folded after the 2011 indictments versus PokerStars, Full Tilt, AP and UB. Those players lost millions of dollars and are the only ones who apparently will never be made whole from the Black Friday fiasco.
