Poker Trillion has been in a war with Boss Media for the last five months over being kicked off the International Poker Network (IPN) that Boss Media manages. There has been a lot of emotional mudslinging on the part of Poker Trillion. They have made several claims that have not been substantiated by the online gambling community and denied by Boss Media.

This all began earlier this year. Poker Trillion was offering players 30% rakeback in cash which is the cap on IPN. The trouble is that they were also giving players 50%-60% rakeback on tournament entries which is not allowed under network rules. Players can only receive 30% back and that is only if they rake $100 or more in a month. This made Boss Media and other skins unhappy.  Poker Trillion refused to honor the demands of Boss Media and the end result was the removal of Poker Trillion from IPN.

Poker Trillion came out and made this statement after filing an attempted lien on IPN’s assets:

““It is to be expected that if Boss Media follow the proper code of conduct then they will shortly make a full and complete disclosure to the Stockholm Stock Exchange on which they are listed; this invariably will have a catastrophic effect on their share price, and may even lead to the arrest by the authorities of certain members of their management team and the possible suspension of their shares.”

“This in turn would mean that players not in the Poker Trillion stable could find their funds that are held by other partners of Boss Media in serious jeopardy.”

In my opinion this is completely absurd. Poker Trillion, in the middle of a nasty legal battle threatens other players on IPN. The claim that players would lose their funds due to this legal battle is laughable. Let’s say Poker Trillion is right about all of this and sticks it to Boss Media. Why would shares being suspended affect player funds? They are held in trust by the LGA. Is Poker Trillion telling us that if they were somehow awarded the assets of the company that they would run off with player’s funds? Are they just trying to destroy IPN’s business by arguably defaming comments?

Poker Trillion then announces they have been awarded garnishes on bank accounts tied to Boss Media. While this was true it was reported by third parties this was only as a guarantee of player funds on any potential legal award. They were not actually awarded the bank accounts as Poker Trillion claimed. It’s still business as usual at IPN.

Now fast forward to this week. Poker Trillion announces they have been awarded the IPN servers and that Boss Media must close its doors.

POKERTRILLION.com Successful in its Application to Seize Boss Media Servers in Malta
Malta August 18, 2008 –The online poker site POKERTRILLION.com has announced that on 18th August 2008 at the First Hall Civil Court, Malta (Court record and Complaint Number 755-08), Judge Gino Camilleri issued a judgement authorising Trillion Ltd to enforce seizure of the Boss Media Malta Limited and Boss Media AB servers, and that these servers cease being used for any commercial activity as from 18th September 2008 with Boss Media not being allowed to appeal the court’s decision any further.

This judgement, which relates to Trillion Limited’s multi-million Euro law suit for breach of contract against Boss Media AB and their associated companies, comes off the back of a number of successful applications made to the courts in Malta by Trillion Ltd. POKERTRILLION.com C.E.O Andy Pyrah explains, “Today’s decision will in effect bring down Boss Media’s operation in their licensed jurisdiction of Malta on September 18, and any partner still on the Boss (IPN) Poker Network at this stage will see their service closed down too”.

The judge further ordered that the cosignatory which is now responsible for the equipment also provides full accounts of the revenues being generated from this equipment.

Pyrah comments further, “It should also be noted that despite appeals from Boss Media, we’ve been successful in every one of our applications that we’ve filed with the courts in Malta and this includes having our initial garnishee order increased from €5million to €20million earlier this month, this in turn means that there is now a €20million freezing order on all Boss Media’s assets within this jurisdiction, and in accordance with European law we will be applying for this to be executed all over Europe”.

This claim has been made by Poker Trillion but has not been backed up with court documents or third party confirmations. Boss Media denied the release in this statement:

Poker Trillion’s recent comments are a reckless attempt to support a legal action that is without merit and initiated as retribution for their dismissal from the Boss Media network. To be clear, player funds are not affected by the current proceedings. All players’ funds are held separately under the control of the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority and cannot be seized by any court.

Poker Trillion is a former customer of Boss Media who was terminated because of rake back violations. They have since then repeatedly tried to disrupt the Boss Media business through the dissemination of groundless rumors. In April 2008 Poker Trillion alleged in a press release a claim that among other things, Boss Media player funds where frozen. The allegations were false but typical of the type of tactics employed by Poker Trillion.

While there has been no hearing on the merits of the Poker Trillion suit, there have been preliminary hearings on the matter. Boss Media has assured that adequate security is provided in Malta in the event of an award of damages against it which we believe be to unlikely.

Boss Media is currently exploring various legal options regarding our Maltese assets and can assure that Boss Media has the requisite assets in place to ensure that our business will continue to operate with the highest standards. In the extremely unlikely event that any Malta operations would be affected, Boss Media have high-performance back-up systems in place to ensure continued service to all our customers and their players.

I find it difficult to believe an attorney was consulted before these releases were made.  There is simply too much misinformation and emotion in them.

So what should players, skin owners and affiliates think? To me the only thing this tells me is to not touch Poker Trillion. This was all very avoidable. If Poker Trillion had followed network rules or taken the threats seriously they would not be in this situation. Now they have shown themselves to be what I believe very childish in an industry that looks for leadership. All of their players were paid and Poker Trillion received all funds owed by Boss Media. Poker Trillion has moved on to the Everleaf Network and life should go on. It seems to me all they have done since being forced out of the IPN door is make a bunch of noise to damage the reputation of a company they obviously never respected to begin with. If they had put all of this effort into improving their own business instead of trying to publicly destroy another business they may have built a massive poker room.

Pokeraddict

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Poker Rooms, Pokeraddict's Industry Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.