Howard Lederer Files

If this has already been discussed, I apologize, I didn't find a thread on it.

Howard Lederer Files

I'm interested in getting opinions of the interview HL did for PokerNew and a podcast in October. I think he came across terribly. There was at best, a distortion of some facts and in other instances out right lies. For someone who was in part running FTP, he seems to 'not know' a lot of important information. I'm talking about segregated player accounts, financial processors, dividend management, etc. He appears to try to deflect most of the responsibility. I didn't think it could be done, but I think he hurt his reputation even more.

Also, I was reading that he has resumed playing high limit poker at Bellagio and Aria, thought abouts this? Personally I think it takes some nerve to show your face, and I'm sure it isn't a coincidence that this is happening after the PokerStars deal went through. On the other hand, he has a right to play just as every other individual does, but those are some brass balls.

Players at Bellagio not happy about this

http://pokerfuse.com/news/live-and-online/lederer-petition-posted-online-18-11/

Everybody had their fingers in the honeypot.

" A new document filed by the ex-wife of Phil Ivey reveals that the eight-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner received approximately $920,000 a month from Tiltware before Full Tilt Poker ceased operations last year.

Read more: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2012/01/the-weekly-turbo-duthie-leaves-pokerstars-and-ept-phil-ivey-11755.htm

Wow. Just finished listening to all 7 Parts of Howard Lederer Files.

I found it interesting how the number of views for each part kept going down. Apparently not everyone was willing to watch all 7 parts.

I'm not sure if this says gamblers just can't be trusted with money, or if it says they just make really bad businessmen.

I find it so hard to believe that some of these very brilliant minds can be so stupid at running a business.

Please stop equating stupidity with greed. It was a pyramid scheme run for the benefit of select few financed by the general gambling public.It was illegal at some point to cash-out, and much more difficult to cash-out than to pay-in. The last sentance is a RED FLAG WARNING, as you should NOT have been allowed to OPEN the account unless providing the same exact form of ID as it takes to CASH-OUT.
Has any jurisdiction reclaimed the ill-gotten monies yet?

I have not searched for the DOJ documents. Not sure if they are available or not.

One thing I was disappointed in with the interview though was the lack of questions surrounding the ' disbursements '. I can only assume that was a topic marked off limits for discussion, yet to me, it is the topic where it would appear, the most egregious violations occurred.
It seems that those payments to Howard, Chris, Ray, and others were being made after the shortage in funding was an issue. Who knew about the shortage is very unclear, at least from this interview.
Howard goes out of his way twice though, to say that Chris had no knowledge, would not have taken any money had he known, and in fact, gave back $14M even before it had all blown up. Was that the total amount of 'disbursements' that Chris received? Howard does not say so, but I inferred that to be the case.

But what about the rest of them? How much did they receive in disbursements, and why hasn't any of that been returned? Surely they can't be arguing that those payments were legit? They could run for political office with reasoning like that.

I also found it laughable that Howard basically blames the whole shortfall on the 130,000 players who were given account credit for deposits, but then FTP never was able to collect the deposit money, due to 'backlog' in collections. And, presumably, all of those players lost all of their FTP account money before FTP could get the funds from the player's banks, etc. And I am supposed to believe that this was more of a contributing factor to insolvency, than the $MM in payments made to the owners?

I will give Lederer credit in one area though. He was upfront about the loan that he had received from FTP, and the fact that he tried to pay it back, using his FTP account balance plus free cash. He related how Gus Hansen called him out on that play, since his account was really gone like everyone else in the US. Howard said he then paid the full amount in free cash. I'll give him credit for telling the whole story.

Finally, if Howard was telling the truth about the loans that FTP made to quite a few high profile poker players, and I would think he would not be naming names without proof, there are a number of other players who should not be able to look in a mirror either. Every one of those players is as directly responsible for US players not having their money, as the owners who took disbursement payments!
I'm not going to name the players, but I am pretty sure it was discussed near the end in Part 7. It is 28 minutes long. The list of names who borrowed, and apparently have not paid back, is quite something.

Lederer is not the only one who should be getting a cold shoulder from the poker community.

Daniel Negreanu's rants on the Lederer inteview is interesting and insightful. Negreanu rant

As far as the players who took loans, they should pay back the loan balance, but I understand to a degree why they wouldn't if they had a balance frozen on the site, especially if the frozen balance is in excess of the loan amount and more importantly, how would the loan payback be used? In particular John Juanda was offered a 80% settlement of $256K loan but declined, instead offerering to pay back at 100% once he knew that the money would not go to continue to fund FTP management since Bitar is alleged to have continued to pull a $200K per month salary post black friday. But a debt is a debt and I would hope those players would repay the loan now that the deal with PokerStars has been completed.