Ray Bitar pleaded guilty Monday to violation of the UIGEA and conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, avoiding jail time because he needs a heart transplant, according to The Wall Street Journal. His plea means that no former owner of Full Tilt Poker was found responsible for the disappearance of more than $300 million worth of player funds.

1. Chris Ferguson Poker Scandal Update

Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, from Los Angeles, began playing poker for play money online through IRC chatrooms in the '90s while he was a college student. He then started participating in live tournaments though he continued with his studies and achieved a Ph.D. In computer science in 1999. Total life earnings: $9,584,547. Latest cash: $29,160 on 06-Sep-2020. Click here to see the details of Chris Ferguson's 298 cashes. Poker legend Chris Ferguson has apologized to the poker community for his role in Black Friday & the Full Tilt Poker scandal. It was short and sweet.

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• Something that cannot go unmentioned in a page dedicated to Chris Ferguson is the Full Tilt scandal. Due to his skill as both a computer guru and a poker player, Ferguson is extremely gifted at developing gaming software. He helped to create the software for what.

Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst all settled their respective civil cases with the U.S. government without admitting to any wrong doing. Bitar was on the hook for criminal charges as well, and, like his former colleagues, will fork over a lot of cash to the government.

No one admitted to, or was found guilty of, stealing from players themselves. The Department of Justice had called Full Tilt Poker a “global Ponzi scheme.” In his sentencing, Bitar reportedly did admit that “safe and secure” was a bogus phrase to describe player funds.

A U.S. Attorney said in 2011 that Full Tilt Poker “insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited with the company.” These accusations were never proven, though Americans have obviously been left empty-handed.

The case of the alleged Full Tilt Poker heist appears to be closed. Those once accused of being responsible for arguably the biggest scandal to ever hit the poker world are out of hot water. To this day, Americans are without a sum totaling about $160 million.

It’s worth noting that individuals who were involved in the payment processing aspect of the business, such as Chad Elie, have arguably been hit with the stiffest penalties.

Mike Matusow has spilled the beans on what he says really happened at Full Tilt Poker in the run up to Black Friday. Infamously, on April 15th 2011, players logged into their accounts only to find that the domain had been seized by the FBI, along with all the money in the accounts.

Matusow has recently kicked off a new podcast he named “The Mouthpiece”, and in the first episode we hear exactly what his role at the company was like. As a sponsored red pro he lined up alongside star names such as Phil Ivey and Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and earned more than $600,000 per year.

When the fateful day came, now almost eight years ago, Matusow was under the impression that everything would be sorted out and all players would receive what was owed. He actually thought the company was rolling in it still.

Following the scandal Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and CEO Ray Bitar were all castigated for their roles in players getting ripped off. But in Matusow’s opinion though, Ferguson did nothing wrong apart from consenting to the wrong guys running a business where he was the majority shareholder. In other words, Lederer and Bitar were all to blame.

While Matusow certainly is a character that is well known around the scene and gets to hear a lot of what comes down the grapevine, we can’t take this as any kind of confirmation. It’s also highly suspect that after all these years Ferguson is yet to make any kind of complete explanation. When he reappeared on the live circuit a couple of years ago we thought the whole story might come out but it never did.

Chris Ferguson Poker Scandal Update

Hopefully Matusow will be pressed to give us more on what went on behind the scenes at Full Tilt Poker before the dream ended.