Saturday, September 24, 2011

GAMBLERS IMITATING WALL STREET ...

Life imitates art. This the phrase we use when events in the real world mirror or seem to be inspired by creative work. Now we have this example of gamblers imitating Wall Street ...


The Justice Department is filing charges against online's Full Tilt Poker, claiming that it's really a Ponzi scheme that's cheated its players out of hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Justice Department claims that over the course of four years Full Tilt Poker's executives used $444 million of player gambling deposits - which were supposed to be protected separate accounts - to pay themselves millions. Specifically, federal prosecutors claim top executives Raymond Bitar paid himself $41 million and Howard Lederer received $42 million.

Gamblers imitating Wall Street ... this is the essence of what Bill Black meant when he wrote about "control fraud" in The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.

- Mark

P.S. Here's a thought. To be fair, Wall Street did imitate Vegas when it created and then collapsed our Casino Economy in 2008. Kind of begs the chicken/egg question, doesn't it? Twilight Zone here we come ...

No comments:

Post a Comment