I just started a new job working with a fellow from Costa Rica. We got to talking and I found out that he worked for AP/UB for 5 years. He was in the consolidations department and also in withdrawals.
Obviously I grilled him all day with questions regarding Cereus and this is what I came up with. I trust his answers 100%, he has absolutely no reason to lie to me.
1. At one point, there was 300 employees working in Costa Rica.
2. Following Black Friday, employees were constantly let go. My co-worker was the one of the last few to leave. When it was all over, the owner and 5 other people stayed on for a few months to see if traffic would increase. He believes the owner will start another poker company eventually.
3. How it worked was they had a number of bank accounts with a number of funds. He estimates the company was profiting between 400k-1M per DAY.
4. The company would pay expenses from these accounts, and then all the profit would go to one of two banks in the owners name---he mentioned one of them was in Ireland. This happened daily.
5. When the DOJ seized the accounts, AP/UB opened new accounts. This was the time when they started to limit withdrawals to a cap amount. HOWEVER, the withdrawals were paid for with NEW DEPOSITS ONLY, since the other money was gone. After this, the profit was again taken out and deposited into the owners bank accounts.
As the amount of new deposits decreased, so did the withdrawal cap amount. Again, the withdrawals were paid for with new deposits, and the excess profit removed to the owner's bank accounts on a daily basis.
6. The company made a payment to the FBI 5 months before Black Friday. He believes this was a payoff of some sort and he estimates is was between 1-2 million.
7. The money is gone. He believes no one will see a cent of their seized funds from AP/UB.
If you have any questions about the inner workings, let me know and I will ask him.
EDIT:
8. The FBI operated as a payment processor: Linwood. This is how they were able to seize accounts on Black Friday, after 1-2 years of monitoring and filing banking account information.
NEW EDIT:
9. He met Phil Hellmuth in Costa Rica on 3 occasions. He was paid (a lot) to play on the site and all of his tournaments and travel was sponsored by the company. He does not believe that he was involved in the cheating.
10. The owner lived in Costa Rica, but 'had many houses, some in Europe.' The CEO was a different person and lived in the US. The owner was 30-32 years old with a super hot wife (lol). I believe this is Scott Tom, but he could not remember his name.
11. Those working in the various departments had no idea about the cheating until the story broke. He believes the company paid all the outstanding debt they owed to players. He quoted $1.9 million but I thought it was more.
12. They paid people in the US and Canada (and probably Europe) to open bank accounts and act as rerouting payment processors. They would start small say 50k and then when trust was gained they would increase the amounts. Some of these clients were getting deposits in the millions into personal bank accounts, and then the company would use these accounts to process withdrawals and sometimes deposits. The people who owned these accounts were paid a percentage for the use of their accounts.
13. Many of the staff that got canned after Black Friday are now working for PokerStars and Full Tilt. Some of them he knows personally.
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