According to Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas, players who have made a disputed claim will likely have to wait until the first quarter of 2015 to receive reimbursement of their Full Tilt Poker funds.
So in other words it will be four years before these players will see the funds that were frozen from their balance since Black Friday took place back in April 2011. The process of paying players has taken so long because every claim has been reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The easier Full Tilt Poker claims have been paid out first whilst the disputed claimants have had to deal with a very long and drawn-out process that will hopefully see a favorable resolution.
Pappas posted an update on Two Plus Two online poker forum after having a discussion with the Department of Justice (DoJ) earlier in the week. It appears as though players with disputed claims that lack “sufficient or clear evidence of this dispute” can expect to get an email from the DoJ within 60 days, which will highlight issues that are still unclear regarding the claim, allowing players to provide additional evidence to support their claim.
Players with disputed claims that do not receive this email will likely fall into one of two categories. The first being the group of players who attempted to make a cashout just before or after Black Friday, but the withdrawal request was not approved. The second category is the players whose disputed claims contain “small discrepancies” between what the player thinks they’re owed and what the Garden City Group (GCG) actually thinks they’re owed. The GCG was appointed by the DOJ to manage the Full Tilt Poker refunds to US players.
Although the wait has been frustrating to put it mildly for US players that have had funds stuck on Full Tilt Poker, Pappas requests players have some patience as it could be another six months at the very least before disputed claimants see their money. Although this whole ordeal has been a torturous process, players in the United States will be happy to find themselves reunited with their frozen funds when they could easily have thought they were never going to see that money again.
It should come as no surprise that there will likely be a number of disputed claims that will not see a resolution as there might not be sufficient evidence to support all of the claims. With that said, players should know that an appeals process will enable players with unresolved claims to protest any decision made if they have enough support to backup their claims.
In the 2+2 forum thread, Pappas also shared some good news for some former Full Tilt Poker players. The GCG is sending out another round of payments totalling around $2 million to some 600 claimants which will be hitting their bank accounts in the next few days if they haven’t already received them. These payments were for undisputed claimants that happened to miss out on the previous batch of Full Tilt Poker payments.
To date there has been around $100 million in refunds issued to players. The first batch of Full Tilt Poker payments went out on Feb 28, 2014 totaling around $76 million. Another round of payments were sent to players on April 1, 2014 which totalled $5 million. Then in June another batch of payments went sent to players who sent in late petitions confirming their FTP balances.
Fortunately, non-US players have not been affected by this lengthy refund process. They were refunded separately as part of the PokerStars and DoJ deal which saw them receive their funds in a matter of weeks.