Full Tilt Poker No Closer to Allowing Withdrawals

New about U.S. refunds has been slow in coming from Full Tilt Poker after FBI indictments shut down there site on April 15th. Even after a an agreement was made with U.S. prosecutors to release the Full Tilt domain for the purpose of allowing U.S. online poker players to withdraw their money, nothing has been coming and very little has been said from Full Tilt.

With growing concerns from players and word coming that PokerStars has refunded more than $100 million to U.S. players, Full Tilt did email players last Friday with a very vague email that in part said;

“We apologize for the delay and the fact that we underestimated the time it would take to work through these issues.”

A small step was taken by Full Tilt last week as well when Full Tilt began to convert tournament tickets into tournament dollars and then crediting accounts with cash. Though a start many Full Tilt players are still waiting for full withdrawals.

Today more information was presented in an exclusive article on eGaming Review site. According to the article the DOJ has unfrozen an account in Ireland freeing up some of the money owed to U.S. players. Still however no money is expected to be immediately available to U.S. players and there is no date to when this may happen.

According to eGaming, Raymond Bitar has been looking for outside investors to raise up to $150 million in return for a stake in the company and then use that money to return money to U.S. players but so far this attempt has been unsuccessful.

According to a FTP source, there was a $60 million shortfall when FTP credited accounts with deposits from accounts they didn’t know were already frozen. Add this to fact that soon they had all 9 accounts seized and this has caused a financial strain at FTP.

According to the DOJ,

“by its (Full Tilt Poker) inability to find a payment processor to process transactions involving US player accounts. The company was facing the shortfall because it continued to credit funds to player accounts despite being unable to actually debit (or “pull”) funds from customers.”

As of yet there is still no time frame presented from Full Tilt Poker to start the process of allowing U.S. poker players to withdraw money.