Full Tilt faces Kentucky state law suit; PokerStars, Absolute, Cake mentioned
Full Tilt Poker's owner has been hit with a lawsuit from the US state of Kentucky demanding the return of monies lost by its citizens on the poker site, just days after it was reported the world's second-largest poker room is the subject of a federal grand jury probe into money laundering.
Full Tilt Poker’s owner has been hit with a lawsuit from the US state of Kentucky demanding the return of monies lost by its citizens on the poker site, just days after it was reported the world’s second-largest poker room is the subject of a federal grand jury probe into money laundering.
Filed in Kentucky’s Franklin Circuit Court by secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet J. Michael Brown on 25 March, the civil action calls for Full Tilt owner and operator Pocket Kings Ltd to refund “treble the amount of gambling losses sustained by Kentucky-based gamblers between March 25, 2005 and September 25, 2009″.
Ireland-registered Full Tilt stands accused of establishing “a series of shell companies to conceal [its] identity and avoid [its] legal responsibilities”. Also implicated for “acting in concert in joint ventures to facilitate, host and profit” from online poker in the state are numerous “unknown defendants”, including Pokerstars.com, AbsolutePoker.com, and Cake Poker.com.
Among other charges levelled at Poker Kings and the other unknown defendants by civil action 10-CI-505 is that they knowingly conducted commercial transactions, solicited money transfers, maintained customer accounts, collected rake, and installed software on machines within the borders of Kentucky.
The news comes just days after the Financial Times revealed a federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating Full Tilt Poker and individuals including Team Full Tilt members Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer in connection with money-laundering violations.
The newspaper reported that a subpoena is believed to have been issued to a witness this week, and that FBI agents or prosecutors have spoken to at least two people involved in disputes with Full Tilt.
Ferguson and Lederer were among those accused of running the poker site from within the US in a Los Angeles civil lawsuit filed in October of last year, after the company confiscated US$80,000 from the accounts of customers Lary Kennedy and Greg Omotoy, believing they were being operated by ‘bots’, or poker-playing machines.
Full Tilt subsequently issued a statement describing the claims as “baseless” and “frivolous“.