The remission process for former players of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker rolls on with another batch of payments scheduled in coming weeks.
The newest round of reimbursement will see 494 players reunited with $133,005.04 in funds. This marks the fourth round of distribution since the surprising announcement by the US Department of Justice back in early 2017 that AP and UB players would be made whole from leftover funds from the Full Tilt Poker remission process.
The announcement detailing the latest wave of payments was posted on the Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet Claims Administration website and was dated October 26, 2018. The nearly 500 players in line to receive their outstanding account balances include petitioners who had disputed the amounts of those balances.
Detailed Emails on the Way
Players located within the US and overseas are among those in the queue. Stateside players can expect payments to be processed directly to their bank accounts via ACH. Those residing in other countries will receive foreign currency checks.
Distribution is being handled by the Garden City Group (GCG), the claims administrator appointed by the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section of the DoJ to effectuate player claims. The GCG will be sending emails to approved petitioners in coming weeks that confirms both the method of payment and the amount of funds to be received.
Among the recipients are some players who apparently owe the US government money. The funds for those approved petitioners will be reduced via the Treasury Offset Program in order to satisfy the outstanding debts. Emails from GCG will explain this further to those to whom it applies.
Black Friday Revisited
Most AP and UB players who still had money on one or both sites when the DoJ clamped down on offshore poker rooms servicing the US market in April 2011 were shocked to learn last year that their funds would be returned. The two poker sites were part of the Cereus Network, who along with Full Tilt and PokerStars, had their domains seized by the DoJ.
UB and AP shut down not long after the seizure. Full Tilt also closed its virtual doors after the discovery that the site was extremely mismanaged. FTP was eventually acquired by the owners of PokerStars, who agreed to pay back Full Tilt players as part of the purchase and settlement agreement. AP and UB players, who were defendants in the original lawsuit filed by the DoJ, were included in the settlement after adequate funds remained to pay them back as well.
The first batch of payments to AP/UB petitioners was announced in August 2017 and resulted in about 7,400 players getting nearly $33.5 million. The second wave was doled out two months later and amounted to roughly $3.7 million landing in the hands of some 4,600 poker players. The third round benefited 450 more to the tune of $1,084,200.97.
All told that’s more than $38 million in reimbursement. The GCG’s latest announcement didn’t reveal whether any more distribution rounds would be forthcoming.
