News: Phil Ivey owes $6 Million to Full Tilt Poker - And Further Financial Relations

In a recently uncovered data, Subject: Poker analysed the transactions made between FTP and two of its pros, Phil Ivey and David Benyamine. According to their report, both pros took loans from FTP on many great occasions and still haven't returned all the money.

In a lengthy report on Full Tilt Poker's financial relationship with its pros, Subject: Poker discovered that Phil Ivey and David Benyamine borrowed money from FTP multiple times. From June 2009 until April 2011, Ivey borrowed at least $10,715,000 from FTP over the course of minimum of 18 loans shown on his FTP account transaction notes.

In addition, Ivey was paid at least $1.2 million by the site in various marketing payments. Ivey repaid loaned money to FTP minimum of five times, totalling at least $5 million.

Meanwhile, David Benyamine earned at least $800,000 from the poker site in salary, wages and marketing payments over a non-contigous eighteen-month period from 2008, 2010 and 2011. He also made at least $750,000 in loan payments to FTP during that period.

While this report comes from Ivey's and Benyamine's account history on FTP's internal systems, Subject: Poker does not have information about any transactions that may have happened through any medium other than the players' FTP accounts. Due to FTP's shut down on June 29, they were only able to obtain data on player-to-player transfers or other transactions that are done in the system with notes.

More information from Subject:Poker's report:

Phil Ivey's transactions:

Earliest known loan was a late 2008 loan for $1 million - this may be what Tiltware referred t as a "large sum of money he owes the site"
$3 million was borrowed in six $500k instalments spread throughout July and August 2009
$1 million was repaid on October 29
A $500k loan was made on November 13 and then two $1 million repayments on November 20 and November 22 (according to HighstakesDB, Ivey earned roughly $5 million in cash games on FTP in October and November 2009, so this success may be the reason that he repaid)
November 29, another $1 million was borrowed
Spring of 2010, Ivey made his last repayment for $1 million. After this date, he received eight additional loans, ending in January 2011 and totalling $3,215,000 - bringing the total difference between loans and repayments to $6,215,000

David Benyamine's transactions:

In 2008, Benyamine received directly to his account a $15,000 per month base salary, around $12,000 more per month on average from rakeback and hourly wages, roughly $4,000 per month in logo bonuses and other marketing bonuses, and roughly $10,000 per month in other payments
In 2008, regular payments were made by taking almost all of Benyamine's money received on his FTP account (according to the note "for a loan collection" attached to these transactions, he clearly owed money to the site)
June 2008, $125,000 was repaid to FTP and another $450,000 in September (HighstakesDB shows these payments happened immediately after a $1.3m win and $1m win respectively)
October 2008, an alert was added to Benyamine's account: "Notify Rich Bitar of any outging transfers over $300k, otherwise he is allowed to transfer in and out." This note appeared after Benyamine's $1.7m loss over a few a days according to HighstakesDB
In 2010, Benyamine's per month base salary increased to $41,667 ($500,004 per year). However, he was still in debt to the site, as his rakeback and hourly payments were being deducted the day that he received them until April 15
Benyamine's last known transaction was on May 2, 2011, seventeen days after most US players lost the ability to withdraw from their FTP accounts. This $5,500 withdrawal for travel expenses was labelled differently than other withdrawals - potentially having something to do with the fact it was made post-Black Friday
June, 2011, multiple sources informed Subject: Poker that they overheard Benyamine on his cell phone at the Rio, asking where he should go to collect money for his tournament buy-ins - making it plausible he was still receiving payments from FTP, though conducted offline