Full Tilt Poker’s former American players have been given an update (of sorts) as to when they might expect to be reunited with their long lost account balances. The Garden City Group (GCG), the Department of Justice-authorized claims administrator for FTP’s former US customers, posted the following message to their FullTiltPokerClaims.com site on Friday afternoon:
“Starting on September 16, 2013, GCG will email a Notice with instructions on how to submit a Petition for Remission online to all potentially eligible claimants identified by GCG utilizing data supplied by Full Tilt Poker. The deadline to submit a Petition for Remission is November 15, 2013. Instructions concerning the filing of Petitions will be included in the Notice and will be posted on this website. Please continue to check this website for updates. Please note that the registration process for email notification is no longer available.”
While any and all updates will be welcomed by FTP players who haven’t been able to access their account balances since April 15, 2011 aka Black Friday, this Friday’s news will likely be viewed as a letdown after GCG said earlier this month that remission payments would commence “shortly.” Given that there is no accepted legal definition of ‘shortly,’ many former FTP players are likely recalling the interminable ‘announcement of an announcement’ rigmarole FTP’s previous management engaged in between Black Friday and PokerStars’ purchase of the FTP assets in August 2012.
In March, the DOJ appointed GCG to handle the proper distribution of funds it obtained as a result of Stars’ takeover of FTP. Earlier this month, GCG stated that the formula for calculating who was owed what would be based on FTP balances as of Black Friday, but should the total of all those balances exceed the sum the DOJ has put aside for the remission process, players will be paid on a pro rata basis. Eventually.
