全速扑克（Full tilt poker）CEO自首

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全速扑克（Full tilt poker）有争议的首席执行官雷比塔（Ray Bitar）已经向美国当局自首。

2+2扑克论坛首先报道了这一消息，雷比塔前往纽约市联邦调查局被逮捕。

投降似乎是一种催化剂，加速全速扑克和扑克之星的合并，比塔在给员工的在一封电子邮件中（见下文）说。没有司法部的允许和支付玩家资金，全速扑克和扑克之星合并交易将停滞不前。

细节尚未尚未公布，但我们会继续更新这个故事。

给所有都柏林员工，

现在你可能已经听说我已返回美国在纽约等候处理的民事和刑事案件。我们在过去15个月努力保持全速扑克的的资产和潜力，以便偿还所有玩家，而且这仍然是我们的首要任务。这比以往任何时候都重要，我们都尽一切可能实现这个任务，并希望我们与扑克之星的交易将很快成为现实。我回美国是这一过程的一部分。

我特别要感谢你们所有在都柏林的人在这个艰难的时刻在这里的辛勤工作、耐心和理解。我相信，你们的辛勤工作和奉献精神不会不被承认，我们已经与扑克之星作出安排，以保证你们全部七月份的工资。因此，你在此期间应该来工作，不会有什么后顾之忧。在那之后，我们期待您的雇佣合约将由收购公司的资产来承担。

对于那些需要联系我的人，我希望继续会在星期一较晚（纽约时间）通过电子邮件和电话联系。

在此期间，请参阅任何业务问题为**绝密**，任何人力资源的问题为**绝密**。

谢谢大家再次。

亲切的问候，

雷蒙德 J 比塔

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/full-tilt-poker-s-bitar-charged-in-new-indictment-in-n-y-1-.html

Full Tilt Poker’s Bitar Charged In New Indictment In N.Y.

Full Tilt Poker founder Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick, head of payment processing, were named in a revised indictment alleging the two defrauded customers and creditors to conceal its cash-poor condition.

Prosecutors said that even after Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara unsealed the initial indictment against the two men in April 2011, Bitar and Burtnick conspired to launder money until June 29, 2011.

The new indictment, unsealed today in federal court in New York, alleges that both men used player funds to finance Full Tilt Poker’s operations and pay its owners. Full Tilt Poker developed a shortfall between the amount of cash in its bank accounts and the money it owed players.

Both men failed to hold player cash in “segregated” accounts and that they then “concocted a method to temporarily disguise the company’s problems,” according to the U.S.
After Ireland-based Full Tilt Poker was forced to stop operating in the U.S. in April 2011 and internationally in June 2011 following a court order issued by federal judges overseeing related civil and criminal cases in the U.S., prosecutors said the company “was unable to repay players around the world the approximately $350 million it owed them.”

Money Spent

While Full Tilt Poker agreed with the U.S. Justice Department to immediately return all money owed to U.S. players, prosecutors said neither the company nor Bitar and Burtnick repaid customers as the company claimed to have done on its website.

“In truth and in fact, however, Full Tilt Poker could not return player money because, as Bitar knew, the player money had been spent by the company and distributed to its owners,” Bharara said in the new indictment.

“Full Tilt Poker’s internal financial statements reported that as of March 31, 2011, the company owed $390 million to players around the world but had less than $60 million in its bank accounts,” prosecutors alleged.

Bitar, of Ireland and California, wasn’t initially arrested in the case last year. He was taken into custody earlier today by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents after his plane landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, said Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI’s New York office.

Bitar is scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan later today, court records show. Bitar and Burtnick were originally charged in an indictment unsealed in April 2011 that accused the two as well as the founders of three of the largest Internet poker companies with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.

A voice-mail message for Richard Ware Levitt, a lawyer representing Bitar, wasn’t immediately returned.

The revised indictment against both men adds two new charges, one of money laundering and a second charge of operation of an illegal Internet gambling business.

The case is U.S. v. Bitar, 10-CR-336, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/07/02/feds-arrest-full-tilt-ceo-ray-bitar/

Feds Arrest Full Tilt CEO Ray Bitar And Again Call Full Tilt Poker A Ponzi Scheme

Ray Bitar, the chief executive of Full Tilt Poker, has been arrested after voluntarily surrendering to U.S. law enforcement and is being held in New York, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Bitar, who is from southern California, remained in Ireland, where Full Tilt Poker was headquartered, ever since he was indicted in the federal crackdown on the U.S. online poker industry last year.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have also filed a superseding indictment against Bitar detailing fresh allegations regarding Bitar’s alleged efforts to conceal Full Tilt’s cash crunch following the Aprill 2011 crackdown on online poker. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, has said that Full Tilt was operating like Ponzi scheme.

According to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Bitar misled Full Tilt’s customers about the reason Full Tilt could not repay U.S. players their money after the federal government effectively shut down the web site. Full Tilt told U.S. players in a press release it was limited by “legal and jurisdictional issues,” but Bitar knew the real reason was that players’ money had been spent by the company and distributed to its owners, the new legal filing says. The feds point to the $60 million Full Tilt had on hand, while owing $390 million to players around the world on March 31, 2011.

At the same time, Full Tilt slowed down the payments of international withdrawal requests, claiming it was conducting anti-money laundering checks while “Bitar continued to encourage players outside the United States to make new deposits with the company with the assurance that their money would be safe,” the feds say.

Federal prosecutors claim that Bitar knew that Full Tilt was dependent on fresh player deposits to meet the backlog of player withdrawal requests, but that he and Nelson Burtnick continued to draw salaries from the company, collectively receiving several million dollars after the federal crackdown on April 15, 2011. “In effect, Full Tilt Poker operated what was, by then, nothing more than a Ponzi scheme,” the superseding indictment says. Burtnick, the only other Full Tilt employee to be indicted, remains at large, according to an individual familiar with the situation.

In addition, Bitar on June 12, 2011, sent an email to Full Tilt Poker’s other owners, advising that the company should not issue a press release revealing bad news because it would trigger “a possible new run on the bank” at a time when the company “can’t even take a 5 million run,” the new legal document filed by the federal government says.

Bitar is the biggest catch yet for federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who last year indicted 11 individuals involved in the online poker industry for operating illegal gambling businesses and shut down the U.S. facing web sites of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Federal prosecutors in the government’s online poker case, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Arlo Devlin-Brown, have secured guilty pleas from seven of the 11 individuals. They have also pursued a $3 billion civil forfeiture case against the online poker companies.

An earlier effort by federal prosecutors in Manhattan to negotiate a resolution to its civil forfeiture claims against Full Tilt partly through a sale of its assets to a French company failed amid issues like paying back players.  PokerStars, the world’s biggest online poker company, which has also been the subject of forfeiture claims by the government, has more recently been engaging in similar negotiations with federal prosecutors.

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