FULL TILT LICENSE REVOKED
2011 would turn out to be a critical year for Full Tilt Poker, which at this point was perhaps the only real contender to PokerStars market dominance. Full Tilt Poker was like PokerStars a main target for the Department of Justice’s actions on Black Friday, and had to see its operation license from the Alderney Gaming Control Commission suspended when the DoJ moved to seize domains and freeze funds from the site on April 15, 2011.
This, however, was not the end of Full Tilt’s troubles. Following a long and winding legal fight, in which the company sought to make up for its misconduct and make a return to the market, regulators from AGCC further complicated the outlook for Full Tilt Poker by completely revoking its operation license on June 29th, 2011.
The revoking of the Full Tilt license, applicable to the mother companies Vantage Limited, Filco Limited and Oxalic Limited, came after a six-day hearing in London, in which it emerged that FTP had “fundamentally misled AGCC about their operational integrity by continuously reporting as liquid funds balances that had been covertly seized or restrained by US authorities, or that were otherwise not actually available to the operator.” The breaches of AGCC regulations also included “false reporting, unauthorized provision of credit, and failure to report material events”.
The revoking of the Full Tilt Poker license would soon turn out to be the final nail in the coffin for the site, which never recovered in its original setup.
The incident was also the start of more than a year of agonizing uncertainty for Full Tilt players around the world before a takeover deal was finally struck with the DoJ and PokerStars in early fall, 2012.