The Garden City Group (GCG), the Full Tilt Poker Claims Administrator authorized by the United States Department of Justice, posted a notice on the Full Tilt Poker Claims website today that a third round of payments to former Full Tilt customers in the U.S. has been approved.
This third round will include approximately 3,500 repayments totaling about $15 million. The poker players included in this round varies – they could have submitted their Petitions for refunds late, submitted incomplete petitions, or did everything correctly and just didn’t receive a refund yet. Also finally in this round are the payments to former Full Tilt affiliates who confirmed their Full Tilt account balances with GCG.
Originally, GCG and the Department of Justice determined that Full Tilt affiliates would not be eligible for reimbursement, but after discussions with the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the GCG changed its mind. There was still a sticking point, however. GCG decided that only funds earned from actual poker play would be reimbursed, not any money made as the result of affiliate businesses. While most people, while not thrilled about that, accepted it, many affiliates found that the balance the GCG was reporting for their accounts was way too low. As it turned out, affiliate business income and rakeback received as a player were not differentiated in GCG’s records; they were both labeled as affiliate income.
The PPA went to bat for players again, helping the Department of Justice understand the difference between rakeback issued to an affiliate as a player and rakeback issued to an affiliate as a business. The explanation was accepted and affiliates were now free to receive their rakeback payments. Affiliates would be responsible for providing proof of the amounts, though, as GCG still had no way to separate player rakeback from business rakeback.
Some former Full Tilt Poker customers may owe the government money, for instance for unpaid taxes. In these cases, their debts could be collected through the Treasury Offset Program. GCG explains:
Please be advised that there are Petitioners who are eligible for payment in the upcoming round of payments, but who have a delinquent debt qualifying for collection through the Treasury Offset Program. Payments for these Petitioners will be reduced in order to satisfy their debt in part or in whole. A notice will be sent to these Petitioners in the upcoming weeks and will include a Unified Financial Management System Vendor Request Form, which must be completed by the Petitioner in order to receive the balance of his or her payment. Please note that Petitioners who were previously approved for payment and were notified that they had a delinquent debt qualifying for collection through the Treasury Offset Program, but who still have not returned a completed form will not receive payment until a completed form is submitted.
This next round of payments is expected to be made in mid-June. The first round included over 27,500 players and $76 million and went out on February 28th. The second round of payments, issued to 2,200 people and totaling $5 million, were sent on April 1st.
