After seizing all the bank accounts and URLs of three major online poker websites PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker in year 2011, US Department of Justice has signed a deal with the Rational Group, which is the parent company of these poker websites. In that settlement, Rational has agreed to pay $731 million to the US federal. After giving a major part of this amount to the US federal, they have also refunded their international poker players. After this huge settlement deal, the popularity of PokerStars, which has acquired Full Tilt Poker legally, increased enormously.
The only members of Full Tilt Poker which has been ignored and who are still waiting for their refunds are its US online poker players. After “Black Friday”, these websites stopped accepting US players. The money which has been disbursed for these US Poker Players has to be approved through Department of Justice. It has already delayed the process by one full year and now as they have hired another company by the name of Garden City Group (GCG), US poker players are not hopeful to get their refund soon.
In a statement released on fulltiltpokerclaims.com, GCG said, “GCG recently received data from Full Tilt Poker with respect to United States Players. GCG is reviewing the data with the Asset Forfeiture Unit of United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (the USAO) and the Asset Forfeiture and money counting section of the United States Department of Justice (the DoJ) to ensure that it is interpreted accurately and to develop an appropriate calculation formula for payments. The data is extensive and it will take some time to complete the review”.
GCG has requested US poker players to come and make a claim for their refunds on the website via “petitions for remission”. Though majority of poker players are not willing to do that as it’ll bring IRA’s attention to them. A lot of players think that PokerStars is responsible for this and its reputation is going down amongst poker players in US.