Full Tilt Poker Reported Failure to Conduct Due Diligence on Payment Processor a Concern

As a handful of shills continue to mount venemous Gaddafiesque attacks against the Gambling911.com website on the popular TwoPlusTwo.com posting forums, the vast majority of members there have risen up, demanding answers from those oppressors who wish to silence them and engage in their own self-servicing propoganda.

Why is it that Full Tilt Poker, the world’s second largest online poker site, can continue to slow pay countless numbers of players and the response from those seeking answers is "Don't read Gambling911.com!"

Great advise, don't read the site that has been featured in just about every mainstream press outlet (see here)

Gambling911.com continues to address these concerns while attempting to explain what has transpired over these past couple of months.

Both Full Tilt and PokerStars have been affected by a series of rather high profile indictments against key payment processors.  We would note that neither Full Tilt or PokerStars has has charged directly lodged against them, but as a result of the payment processor actions, nearly all have agreed to cooperate with US officials.  Millions of dollars belonging to Full Tilt and PokerStars players is now seized and will likely go towards a good cause, like 10-year highway paving jobs.

To be fair, so much of what is taking place is out of Full Tilt Poker’s control.  If confronted with a similar situation, many weaker competitors would be forced to shut down.  We at Gambling911.com have little doubt that Full Tilt is working around the clock to remedy the situation and commend the poker room for staying in business during these tough times.  The main issue of concern is a failure to properly communicate what has taken place, leaving players in the dark.  Unfortunately, it just seems to keep getting darker out there. 

Now comes word that Full Tilt is apparently using the services of a questionable (at best) payment processor that might be content to do more than just bend over for US law enforcement when called upon to do so….How about some double billing?

One poster on the TwoPlusTwo.com forum complained of being double charged.  He explains what transpired.

Starting at the end January, a company identifying itself as PMI 8888758035 began making withdraws from poker-players who had played on Full Tilt Poker. The amounts withdrawn matched deposit amounts that had already cleared through other payment processors. These withdraws were at first seen as oversights -- a FTP payment processor working on old information, and a number of those impacted reported getting calls back after leaving messages with the 888 number and getting refunds. [That number just rings today...]

Despite the fact that FTP promises not to share your banking details with anyone, this is simply untrue. They rely on an army of 3rd-party payment processors; some of which are obviously not above-board.

FTP's response was that they did not initiate the charge and that they would not take any action, despite this company being a known (previously used) payment processor.

At the end of February, PMI 8888758035 did it again. At this point anyone silly enough to not have closed their bank account (myself included) had another ACH withdraw taken from them matching their initial amount. These amounts matched FTP deposit amounts from Fall of 2010.

Because of the nature of ACH transactions, many people -- myself included -- were left in the cold, unable to reverse their transactions. They money is gone.

It appears that yesterday, they did it again. They've changed their name and gotten a new account and now PMI SALE is making withdraws. This new name and account went through and hit all of their old marks again -- many of whom, it seems, were FTP players.

I'm now faced with closing the account. I understand I shouldn't have been so foolish as to not have a separate "high risk" bank account, but like many, poker is a recreational activity, not my primary source of income.

CHECK YOUR ACCOUNTS FOR UNAUTHORIZED TRANSACTIONS FROM:

PMI SALE

PMI 8888758035

A search of these forums will show many, many people asking the same question.

1.If you have one of these transactions, call your bank immediately.

2.If you have one of these transactions, report here.

3.If the dollar figure matches any FTP-related transactions, especially from the Fall-2010 time period, please report here.

4.If you have one of these transactions, consider closing your bank account. "PMI" has changed their name once already.

Another member of the forum chimed in:

Probably been said a zillion times but its downright pathetic for Full Tilt not to honour these payments the first time and let people know what is going on and what necessary steps to do to make sure it doesnt happen again.

Ultimately Full Tilt aswell as the grinders will suffer because people will just stop depositing on their site if this continues.

A list of at least 28 posting forum members affected by the PMI matter was provided on the TwoPlusTwo posting forum.  The reality is that the vast majority of recreational players (customers of TwoPlusTwo.com) do not read the TwoPlusTwo.com forums.

A Full Tilt Poker rep insisted early Tuesday his company does not have any relationships with the payment processor in question.

Hi,

Sorry for the delay in posting.

I can confirm that Full Tilt has never contracted with, or used a third party processor called PMI.

We never initiated, nor authorized, the processing of any PMI related transactions. We have attempted to contact the PMI +1-888 number to get more information for our legal team, to vigorously defend these allegations and investigate this matter further.

So far, we've been unsuccessful in determining the source of how these transactions were wrongfully processed. We recommend that you contact your bank and dispute all transactions related to PMI 8888758035. As stated, they were never authorized nor processed by any of Full Tilt’s processors.

If we find out any further information related to PMI 8888758035, we will post it in this thread.

Sean

One forum member was left scratching his head.

Pretty generic response IMO obviously FTP has something to do with this. How else does FTP explain that these double charges are for the same amounts as everyones FTP deposits...Also how does it affect so many FTP players? Not one person ITT has said they dont play at FTP and yet they still recieved a charge from FTP

Another tried to apply some statistics and probabilities to the situation.

Any of you 'statistics' types want to put a number on the likelihood of a coincidence that the number of people on the 1st page of the thread just happen to be FT customers and also just happen to get hit with PMI bogus charges AND the fact that many (if not most) of those charges just happen to match amounts legitimately deposited on FT?

Needless-to-say, poker players have been contacting Gambling911.com en masse about this situation.

“If this happened to Absolute Poker (profiled on 60 Minutes two years ago as part of an ‘insider cheating scandal), it would be breaking news of another scandal and headlining all those web portals that get Full Tilt Poker affiliate money.”

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com

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