PPA Letter to Lock Poker Demanding Player Repayment

[TheEngineer]

Hi all,

Here's the letter PPA sent to Lock Poker today, demanding that Lock Poker repay players. The actual letter can be seen at http://theppa.org/ppa/2014/04/25/ppa...to-lock-poker/

April 25, 2014

To: The Owners, Officers, and Managers of Lock Poker

Re: Status of poker player requests for return of funds.

On behalf of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), we, the undersigned members of the PPA Board of Directors, are writing regarding the current payment processing situation at Lock Poker. We will gladly report to our membership any information you can provide.

The reason we are contacting you with this formality is due to the substantial number of complaints we have received from Lock Poker players. We have been informed that Lock Poker is taking an unreasonable time in fulfilling its customers’ requests for return of their funds. In some cases, the reports are of significant delays; in others, we see reports of requests for payment having languished over a year with no progress. Similarly, many players report that Lock Poker frequently responds to their inquiries about the status of their funds with canned emails or emails that simply state the request is "still in processing."

The Lock Poker website has no mention of these significant delays. To the contrary, as of today Lock Poker support is telling potential new depositors that withdrawal requests take eight to ten weeks to process, with some experiencing longer withdrawal times. While this may be a marginal improvement over recent reports from potential new depositors of promised withdrawals in four to six weeks, it clearly falls far short in warning new depositors of the significant cashout situation at Lock Poker.

As America's leading advocate for the political and legal rights of US Poker Players, PPA is well aware of the difficulties inherent in transferring money to and from poker players in the US. We are also aware of, and totally committed to, the principle that protection and availability of player funds is essential for a properly functioning poker economy. In accord with this, PPA keeps its members informed of problems concerning player funds held on account at poker sites and works as aggressively as possible to protect and/or facilitate return of those player funds when poker businesses have failed to do so.

With respect to Lock Poker specifically, the uneven nature of your processing of player requests for return of their funds raises questions. All players seem aware of the difficult nature of the times and expect some delay in processing payments, but players do not understand why some players are occasionally paid within or near the stated time frame while others wait additional months and others seem to never get paid. Equally perplexing are the many reports that players are getting little or no information regarding why such a state of affairs exists. As we are sure you are aware, many players are directly questioning the financial solvency of Lock Poker and its ability to repay players. Many have begun to sell their funds on Lock Poker on the secondary market for substantially less than the face value.

The undersigned Board Members have discussed simply issuing direct warnings to all our members concerning the Lock Poker situation, but before deciding whether to take such action it was agreed that Lock Poker should first be offered the opportunity to communicate its policies and situation. We would like to begin that dialogue with responses to the following questions:

1. Does Lock Poker keep players’ funds segregated from operating funds? If so, what mechanism is used to accomplish this separation?

2. Does Lock Poker have, or will it be implementing, a system to organize its payment processing so that those who have been waiting the longest will be given priority in future payments?

3. Does Lock Poker have a timeline of its plan to pay its players in full?

4. Will Lock Poker immediately provide open, accurate, up-to-date information regarding time required to process customer withdrawal requests?

We appreciate that there may be legal difficulties in processing payments to US players, but we cannot ignore a situation where the funds of a substantial portion of the poker community may be in jeopardy.

We look forward to your response to our inquiry.

Sincerely,

John Pappas, PPA Executive Director

Rich Muny, PPA VP of Player Relations

Patrick W. Fleming, PPA Litigation Support Director

[TheEngineer]

The Lock Poker section from today's PPA Weekly Update

PPA Letter to Lock Poker

Due to the continued cash-out issues players are experiencing with Lock Poker, PPA today sent a letter to Lock demanding action on this issue. I encourage you to read this letter here.

In the letter, signed by PPA Executive Director John Pappas, PPA Litigation Support Director Patrick Fleming and me, we demand answers to the following:

1. Does Lock Poker keep players’ funds segregated from operating funds? If so, what mechanism is used to accomplish this separation?
2. Does Lock Poker have, or will it be implementing, a system to organize its payment processing so that those who have been waiting the longest will be given priority in future payments?
3. Does Lock Poker have a timeline of its plan to pay its players in full?
4. Will Lock Poker immediately provide open, accurate, up-to-date information regarding time required to process customer withdrawal requests?

In the meantime, we encourage extreme caution when depositing on Lock Poker. We also strongly encourage affiliates to remove Lock Poker ads and positive reviews. In the current state, these are at best misleading.

[Crowe Diddly]

If you don't mind, a question.

Why now? This letter could have been written last fall, or any number of other times. Would you all not better serve the people you represent by getting in front of these things in a much timelier manner, then now, when there's zero chance of Lock doing anything else but either closing, rebranding, or just disappearing into internet poker lore?

You know the deal with Lock, Engineer. You've known for a long time now, like most people here, that they're clearly a scumbag, money-less fraud of a company. Doesn't this letter seem like it's way, way too late for anything but publicity?

Better than no letter at all, of course. But at this point, not much.

[BeerAndPoker]

Even though I agree with Crowe on the timing I think the letter is still good idea and won't question the timing.

It's just unfortunate that Lock Poker don't even care at this point and will either practice ignorance or brush it off with typical lies like they have made in past statements.

[shortbuspoker]

If you don't mind, a question.

Why now?

Good PR leading the WSOP to increase membership IMO. A demand from the PPA isn't worth the paper it's written on. I'm not saying that they aren't sincere, but their words carry no weight whatsoever.

[Dan Druff]

You guys know I am the first one to criticize the PPA when I feel they deserve it.

While it would have been nice if they got involved earlier, I am happy to see their involvement now.

Part of the reason that this Lock scam continues is that players are uninformed as to the situation. Everyone reading this forum knows the truth about Lock Poker, but many who don't follow the forums have no idea.

The PPA has a wide membership, and letters like these -- however late -- are always valuable. If a single person decides not to deposit on Lock Poker as a result of this letter, then this letter is a net gain for the community.

For years I have been asking the PPA to broaden their scope and include warning their member base about shady poker sites as part of their mission. Their failure to do so in the past was one of my biggest problems with them.

Recently they have gotten involved in the Full Tilt refunds situation, and now have involved themselves in the Lock situation, as well. This is progress, and I would like to give the PPA positive reinforcement for doing this, rather than criticizing them for when they chose to get involved.

The more united the poker community is against scam sites and shady practices by site operators, the sooner these scams can be crushed and the victims numbering fewer.

[haleylh]

You guys know I am the first one to criticize the PPA when I feel they deserve it.

While it would have been nice if they got involved earlier, I am happy to see their involvement now.

Part of the reason that this Lock scam continues is that players are uninformed as to the situation. Everyone reading this forum knows the truth about Lock Poker, but many who don't follow the forums have no idea.

The PPA has a wide membership, and letters like these -- however late -- are always valuable. If a single person decides not to deposit on Lock Poker as a result of this letter, then this letter is a net gain for the community.

For years I have been asking the PPA to broaden their scope and include warning their member base about shady poker sites as part of their mission. Their failure to do so in the past was one of my biggest problems with them.

Recently they have gotten involved in the Full Tilt refunds situation, and now have involved themselves in the Lock situation, as well. This is progress, and I would like to give the PPA positive reinforcement for doing this, rather than criticizing them for when they chose to get involved.

The more united the poker community is against scam sites and shady practices by site operators, the sooner these scams can be crushed and the victims numbering fewer.

I don't mind seeing them write this, but it appears that it's...:

a) Way too little, way too late;
b) Designed more to let the PPA say, "Look! We stood up for the players at Lock Poker!" in case anybody looks back from some point in the future.

I think the PPA did the same thing regarding Full Tilt, but not until after the barn door had blown open, the animals had wandered out to pasture, died of exposure, been picked up by the carcass trucks and rendered into dog food.

If there's anything good that could come of it, it's to maybe put a little more pressure on CardPlayer to drop the Lock ads. But I, for one, don't go to bed expecting to wake up and discover that Shulman has grown a conscience.

[TheEngineer]

b) Designed more to let the PPA say, "Look! We stood up for the players at Lock Poker!" in case anybody looks back from some point in the future.

Not really. Look at the 2+2 Zoo thread on this. I'm getting bashed there...and I'm a Zoo mod. I don't think we get credit, now or future. We're simply seeking to warn potential depositors.

I think the PPA did the same thing regarding Full Tilt, but not until after the barn door had blown open, the animals had wandered out to pasture, died of exposure, been picked up by the carcass trucks and rendered into dog food.

Here's a good example of what I mentioned above, Haley. PPA has gone way over and above on the FTP issue IMO. I'm stuck for around five figures and I've watched this every step of the way. Many praise us, but many feel as you do. I don't think we got any net benefit as an organization. To the contrary, I think we get the most credit sticking to legislative advocacy.

We will continue standing up to crooked sites, but don't act like it's out of some desire to pump up the organization's standing.

If there's anything good that could come of it, it's to maybe put a little more pressure on CardPlayer to drop the Lock ads. But I, for one, don't go to bed expecting to wake up and discover that Shulman has grown a conscience.

I would like them to do just that.

[TheEngineer]

You guys know I am the first one to criticize the PPA when I feel they deserve it.....<snip>

Thanks Druff!

[Crowe Diddly]

So my question gets ignored, TheEngineer? You must have read it, it was the very first response to your posts. It's a question I think a LOT of people have.

[TheEngineer]

So my question gets ignored, TheEngineer? You must have read it, it was the very first response to your posts. It's a question I think a LOT of people have.

PPA has been warning about Lock since mid-February. We'll continue warning about them and putting pressure on affiliates still promoting them.

[BeerAndPoker]

So my question gets ignored, TheEngineer? You must have read it, it was the very first response to your posts. It's a question I think a LOT of people have.

PPA has been warning about Lock since mid-February. We'll continue warning about them and putting pressure on affiliates still promoting them.

Your dodging the question asked using political lobbying type of tactics to get around the giving an answer. That type of stuff might seem like an acceptable answer for some people who fall for it but not many of us here.

Don't get me wrong it's a good thing that The PPA has warned people for the past two and a half months but don't you think it should have started to do so sooner?

If you don't believe so then why is that?

If you do believe The PPA should have warned people sooner then why was their a long delay in this when Lock has been paying out slowly and lying about their struggles for a long time now?

People like direct answers and not political rhetoric to dodge a question.

[RealTalk]

So my question gets ignored, TheEngineer? You must have read it, it was the very first response to your posts. It's a question I think a LOT of people have.

PPA has been warning about Lock since mid-February. We'll continue warning about them and putting pressure on affiliates still promoting them.

and you seriously wonder why a significant number of poker players out there despise you?

[TheEngineer]

and you seriously wonder why a significant number of poker players out there despise you?

If they didn't form a group focused on dealing with rogue sites, they must not despise us as much as you think. And, as you didn't bother to IM me on this issue and send me updates and draft letters, you may not be quite as passionate about this as you believe.

I live and breathe this fight, and have given a great deal to it. If someone looks at me with hatred, that's something I cannot control. I know I've done my part.

[RealTalk]

and you seriously wonder why a significant number of poker players out there despise you?

If they didn't form a group focused on dealing with rogue sites, they must not despise us as much as you think. And, as you didn't bother to IM me on this issue and send me updates and draft letters, you may not be quite as passionate about this as you believe.

I live and breathe this fight, and have given a great deal to it. If someone looks at me with hatred, that's something I cannot control. I know I've done my part.

cool story bro.

care to answer crowe's question?

[nunbeater]

Way to strike while the iron is hot PPA.

[KlownBuster]

Way to strike while the iron is hot PPA.

about a year late and dollar short!

[TheEngineer]

The letter was OPEN to bring public attention to this issue. We are warning players not to deposit and telling affiliates that they are on public notice if they continue their actions.

Oh, and BTW, Cardplayer stopped running Lock Poker ads today.

[nunbeater]

Cardplayer can fuck right off as I am sure that the only reason they stopped running Lock ads is because Lock ran out of their ad money.

Even if they refused them out of some sort of principle they can still fuck right off due to how long it has taken this issue to get handled.

[TheEngineer]

I suspect all the player activism played a role, but CardPlayer shouldn't get any credit for this, for sure.