Full Tilt Poker isn’t the only online poker site facing trouble post-Black Friday 2011. PokerStars is also coming under fire, and from more sides than one.
Unlike Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars has at least paid back its U.S. players the funds sitting in their seized accounts after the D.O.J. closed down U.S. operations. But that hasn’t gotten them completely out of the woods with all of its member base (or former member base, as the case may be.)
Now the plaintiff is the software maker Cardroom International who has filed a claim against both Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars for, as best this writer can interpret the claim, failing to agree with written agreements regarding purchase of software for use on play money sites linked with TV networks like ESPN, Fox and NBC by interfering with the network’s ability to promote that software. How? By buying up the airtime itself to promote its own software. What’s more, the complaint alleges, Poker Stars used money that was obtained illegally from U.S. players to pay for this airtime.
Complex, no doubt. But the end result is time and money in legal wranglings and the public relations nightmare that follows such a spectacle.
Meanwhile, in other sinister Poker Stars news, two Team PokerStars members, Leonardo Fernandez and Veronica Dabul, have been named in a lawsuit filed by Wynn Las Vegas for allegedly cheating at craps to the tune of some $700K. Talk about a public relations nightmare. Veronica Dabul has since been removed from the Team PokerStars roster, although Leonardo Fernandez is still a member.