Lederer Blast Ivey And Others For Full Tilt Woes
September 21, 2012 3:54 pmFull Tilt Poker director Howard Lederer has been speaking out recently to PokerNews in a seven hour interview dubbed ‘The Lederer Files.’ In addition to defending the actions of his fellow board member Chris Ferguson, Lederer then went on throw CEO Ray Bitar under a bus, effectively labeling him incompetent and unqualified.
In the latest installment from his video interview, Howard Lederer has now directed some of the blame for Full Tilt’s failings at the door of Phil Ivey, whom he claims jeopardized the company’s precarious situation further by his $150 million lawsuit.
“He wasn’t speaking out for anybody except himself. He had a moral obligation to the poker community to do everything he could to, at the very least, not damage the company he had greatly profited from..The lawsuit was absurd.”
Lederer then goes on to explain Ivey’s actions scuppered any attempts to do a deal to bail out Full Tilt and effectively quickened the site’s demise. In addition, a whole slew of other pros have received criticism from Lederer for not returning their loans after Full Tilt’s enormous cash shortfall was discovered. As Lederer goes on to explain:
“We got a lot of resistance. As of the end of May 2011, the only member who paid back what he owed the company was me. I owed the company $700,000 and I paid it in late May.”
As well as blasting Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Ray Bitar and David Oppenheim for not paying up, Erick Lindgren also receives particularly criticism for not returning a $2 million loan he was “mistakenly sent twice for a total of $4 million.”
With a few more installments of the Lederer files to run, the poker community has actively been analyzing Howard Lederer’s take on the Full Tilt fiasco and criticizing his selective memories of events. Others have also questioned Lederer’s attempt to present himself as an innocent party, with US pro Tony Dunst commenting:
“In ‘The Lederer Files’, Howard Lederer chronicles his transformation from pretentious know-it-all to highly convenient know-nothing.”