Full Tilt Hits Back, Gus Hansen Breaks Silence, Greg Raymer on CNN

It is day three of the latest Full Tilt Poker saga and the mainstream media are still covering the story.

We are into day three of the latest Full Tilt Poker scandal and the level of interest from the mainstream media shows no sign of slowing down.

Full Tilt Hits Back

Gus Hansen

Today attorneys for Full Tilt Poker hit back at the claims the site was a massive Ponzi scheme in the Wall Street Journal:

"While the government has obviously taken issue with the underlying activities of FTP, under any reasonable interpretation, the world-wide operations of the online cardroom are not a so-called Ponzi scheme," said Ian Imrich, an attorney for Chris Ferguson.

Representing Ray Bitar, Jeff Ifrah added "A Ponzi scheme requires an investment vehicle in order to receive a certain rate of high return. None of those things happened here, maybe it was mismanaged."

This mirrors what Ifrah said exclusivley to PokerStrategy.com yesterday, when he told us "I don't understand the Ponzi Scheme comments that were made. There is no reference to the words 'Ponzi Scheme' anywhere within the complaint itself, and Full Tilt hasn't been accused of being one. This was more similar to a bank that failed- there were mismanaged accounts, bad decisions made, and poor investments. Would anyone call a failed bank a Ponzi Scheme?"

Gus Hansen Breaks His Silence

Elsewhere, Team Full Tilt member Gus Hansen has broke his silence, stating "I was unaware of what happened" in Danish newspaper EB.dk.

More aptly, it was in fact his agent Erik Balck Sørensen, who conveyed that they were completely unaware of the inner workings of the company:

"Until Black Friday, Gustav was convinced that he was part of an oiled and well-running business machine, with a professional board of directors, who had a clear distinction between player money and money for running the site."

"We do not wish to begin speculating in different scenarios, but if one is to believe the U.S. DoJ, then reality has been much different from what we were told internally."

The interview also goes on to suggest that Gus was nowhere near the top at Full Tilt, and also confirmed that he has a significant amount of money tied up with the site.

Fossilman on CNN

World Champion, and very brief Red Pro (He wore a Full Tilt Patch just once) Greg Raymer has just completed an interview discussing the story on CNN.

Staff Concerns

Finally Reuters has decided to focus on one area of the saga that has currently been under represented, the staff. They interviewed several of the 550 strong, multi-lingual staff of Pocket Kings in Dublin, to get their take on the news.

"At the moment we just sit here and do nothing all day, just reading news from poker websites and message boards. For three months, we are doing nothing.If you're not made redundant, everyone is wondering what's next? There is a lot of uncertainty." said one unnamed French employee.

"They just tell us the minimum. There is no communications, we get most of the news through online forums," said another French employee, who was worried he would lose his job.

PokerStrategy.com will bring you all the breaking news, as it happens, and we expect to have an exclusive statement from Full Tilt Poker very soon.

by Barry Carter