Full Tilt Poker Working Towards Relaunch Outside US
Once among the largest online poker rooms in the world, the Full Tilt Poker website hasn’t been live world-wide in over a year, but the dragon is slowly awakening as the poker site – under new ownership – is now requesting that its non-US members start sending in documents to verify their identification. Full Tilt Poker is scheduled to relaunch in November of 2012.
Several months ago, in an interesting twist of events, Full Tilt Poker was bought out by its biggest rival. PokerStars agreed to pay off all of Full Tilt Poker’s debts – something FTP could not manage to do on its own – in exchange for full acquisition of the Full Tilt brand.
The online poker operator began requesting verification documents on Thursday via emails sent out to its customers outside of the US. The email stated that identity verification is a necessary process “in the interest of account security and in accordance with the anticipated Isle of Man regulatory requirements.”
Although Full Tilt Poker will not go live for another two months, all players who submit the required verification documents now will find their accounts fully active on the date of the launch, giving them complete access to their accounts, including the ability to make a withdrawal of existing funds.
Non-US members of Full Tilt Poker are asked to supply a copy of their photo ID, in the form of a driver’s license, passport or some other government issued proof of identity. Confirmation of address is required, but it must match the address Full Tilt Poker had on file when the customer registered their account with the online poker room. Any type of utility bill, insurance forms, bank statement, credit card statement or pay stub slip will do, so long as it shows the correct address. If a player has moved, they should be able to retrieve a document with their old address from the utility company, insurance company, etc. Players are asked to either scan the original documents and fax or email them to Full Tilt Poker, or send “high-quality digital photographs” of the forms via conventional mail.
Unfortunately, American’s who still have funds tied up in Full Tilt Poker have yet to receive any direction as to how they can retrieve their due payments. PokerStars has already paid off the debt to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), thus they are no longer involved in the process of US player compensation. The DoJ has taken on the full responsibility of reimbursing Full Tilt Poker’s American players, and is accepting bids from claims administrators to process all claims, but that is the last anyone has heard in terms of progress.
The latest reports from the DoJ assert that there are approximately 1.3 million American players from Full Tilt Poker owed $159 million.
According to recent reports from the new owners of Full Tilt Poker, they are in the process of hiring a fresh management team. The previous mangers of Full Tilt Poker are still facing a multitude of criminal charges brought up against them by the DoJ.
