Legal Rights of Players with Unpaid Balances

Players' Funds Legal Guide

The PPA’s legal team has prepared a legal analysis of the options available to individual players who still have not been able to access their online poker funds held on account. The document, "Legal Rights of Players with Unpaid Balances – A PPA Information Guide" seeks to provide our members with facts and information about how individuals can seek to claim their online poker account money. We hope you find this document useful and informative. Should you have further inquiries about players' funds you can contact our Litigation Support Network at: legal@theppa.org.

in other words, if you want to sue....you on your own

I would think someone would be getting a class action going against them. Possibly this is/ has already happened. Anyone hear anything about this ?

Yes, there was a class action filed against FTP on behalf of the players within the last couple weeks by Todd Terry and a couple other player/lawyers.

I have mixed feelings about that suit. Sueing FTP for knowing they were breaking the law is kind of funny considering the players knew it too.

Appears it will hold up the buyout of FTP, not sure it covers all players (anyone know?) and even tho FTP is certainly at fault for allowing players to play when they didn't get the funds and for not keeping player funds separate, the first wouldn't have happened had the DOJ not been seizing payment processors and the second wouldn't have been a problem either.

The DOJ has our damn money and they have no intention of giving it back.

What do you mean the players knew they were breaking the law?

I certainly knew it. I knew on most other sites I could not just whip out my checkbook and deposit, but giggled that I could on Full Tilt.

From what i get it's not worth it, it could be in the courts for a long time.
A class action lawsuit is a bad idea, unless it's on the DOJ.
Why is a class action lawsuit bad, everyone gets the same amount of money.. If someone has 5,000$ and someone else has 100$ they would both get the same amount, lets say 1,000$ So the guy with 5,000 loses out on the rest of his cash.

The players knew that they (FTP) were breaking the law, not that they (the players) were breaking the law.

I see these types of comments a lot, and I'm not sure I agree. You and me, and the small percentage of online poker players that make up poker forums, might have known this. But I'm not so sure the average donator did -- and that's the everyman of online poker sites. The average player is not involved in these discussions and does not know an online poker community even exists (to a large extent, anyway). And online poker has never sustained headlines -- so he isn't necessarily going to assume it's illegal to run the rooms or process payments.

my guess is why even try, glad I only had 20 dollars left in my ftp account.

That may well be the case, but AFAIK the players bringing this action aren't the "average" ones you're talking about. They would have at least known that the legality of the site's operations was only based on untested legal opinion, not something bankable.

Cliffs on the document BTW, keeping in mind that IANAL yadda yadda yadda:

- Sites have a contractual obligation to give you any money in your account and it's not a gambling debt so courts can enforce it
- That said lawsuits are very expensive
- The discovery process could result in a player having to admit to things in a public forum under oath that they'd rather not admit to
- If you believe the site really is trying to pay you back but is taking to long then a lawsuit will only slow things down, not speed them up

- Under very specific circumstances (mostly it seems to apply to people who had a withdrawl in process on April 15 that was affected by the payment processor account seizures - just having an account balance on a site won't be enough) it's possible to file a civil claim against the DOJ's seizures but the window for doing so closes on July 15. And anyone doing so also opens themselves up to the discovery problems discussed above

Very possible I've over-simplified so obviously read the whole thing in full if you're thinking about pursuing a suit. But the gist seems to be that unless you've got a substantial amount of money tied up on the site and you're certain that you're squeaky clean in the eyes of the law it's probably not worth your while to sue.

woah i have been away from the poker field for way to long. This is all news to me. Very interesting read!

The only ones who benefit from a class action suit are the lawyers. i wouldn't join one