7,400 former Absolute Poker & UltimateBet players will receive $33.5m in stolen funds as the Garden City Group announced the first round of remissions repayments.
7,400 petitioners are about to receive $33.5 million taken from them by Absolute Poker (AB) and Ultimate Bet (UB) circa 2011, and the decision is blowing some people’s minds.
It still blows my mind that the people who lost their money on UB on Black Friday are actually going to get their money back https://t.co/a6RAKWJZQN
— gN Doug Polk (@DougPolkPoker) August 18, 2017
The poker community is bandying the news around the Internet like dust from Bowie’s Starman after delighted players began receiving emailed confirmation from Garden City Group (GCG) officials of successful petition claims.
My Petition for Remission for Absolute Poker was approved. Got email today … ship that $27.35! pic.twitter.com/SfybW5dQ2X
— Chad Allan Holloway (@ChadAHolloway) August 18, 2017
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) appointed the GCG to sort out the AB/UB mess after they did such an excellent job of returning $118m to former US-based Full Tilt Poker (FTP) players who were robbed blind back in 2011.
The whole affair has moved along at a fast pace since Joon H. Kim, Acting 
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told the poker community of his attention to use the remaining dregs of the FTP remissions process to make former AB/UB players whole. The GCG were appointed post-haste, and the website AbsolutePokerClaims.com created to help manage the flow of happy punters.
The GCG will return funds via bank transfer, and players on the receiving end will have to wait 4-6 weeks to get their money. The cutoff date for claims is Sep 7.
The news comes a month after AB co-founder Scott Tom agreed to forfeit $300k as part of a deal that he’s hoping will help him avoid jail time for his part in the AB/UB robberies.
Tom pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanour of being an accessory after the fact in the transmission of gambling information, a crime that carries the possibility of a custodial sentence, but methinks we already have too many people in prison, and the former AB co-founder will be able to get away Scott free.
