Hidden beneath the surface at Full Tilt Poker is an ongoing legal matter that is not generating much publicity. At the center of the lawsuit is former Full Tilt player Lary “pokergirl z” Kennedy, who in October, filed a suit against the company claiming fraud, libel, slander, false advertising and the biggest charge of all, racketeering. Basically, Kennedy was a successful middle stakes player on the world’s second largest online poker site.
The back-story of the case is a bit complex and it all started when one of Kennedy’s opponents, a frequent poster on poker forum twoplustwo.com, made a claim that Kennedy had illegally used bots on Full Tilt to cheat players. Kennedy vehemently denied the charges and in doing so, admitted that she sometimes used a friend’s account in order to get more action at the tables. As a result of the admission, Full Tilt quickly swooped in to freeze and seize the $80,000 in her account. Before filing suit, Kennedy reached out to Full Tilt to get her money back but Full Tilt denied her request. Not willing to simply walk away from that kind of money, Kennedy instead decided to hire a lawyer and file suit against Full Tilt, Howard Lederer, Patrik Antonius, Vert Enterprises, Tiltware and other individuals involved with the site.
As a mild surprise, the racketeering charge is not all that uncommon in civil suits such as these. Kennedy and another plaintiff cite the hundreds of illegal gambling transactions facilitated by the site. With this type of charge and the negative publicity, it is curious as to why Full Tilt didn’t try to settle this matter before reaching this point. After all, the state of online gambling in this country is far from being settled and may cast some unwanted negativity on the industry as a whole.
Interestingly, since the suit was filed, Kennedy’s attorney, Cyrus Sanai, has come under a bit of scrutiny for past involvement in other questionable internet-related cases. Specifically, he stumbled across some objectionable material in the website of a California judge. Rather than responding to the past incidents, Sanai instead made a plea for others with experience of having Full Tilt seize their funds to come forward, perhaps in an attempt to build an even bigger suit.
Going into the final days of 2009, this can’t be good news for those at Full Tilt.
