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Poker Players Alliance enters the ring in Kentucky lawsuit against PokerStars7 December 2015(PRESS RELEASE) -- The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) on Friday charged that Kentucky politicians and plaintiffs' attorneys are wrongly seeking to recover Kentucky consumer funds without consent or any intent to return such funds to such consumers. The PPA filed a motion to join the Commonwealth's lawsuit against certain PokerStars entities and former affiliates, which seeks to collect tens of millions of dollars in alleged losses of Kentucky poker players while the online poker site operated in the Commonwealth during a period between 2006 and 2011. The PPA believes that such claim would result in an inequitable and unjustified windfall to the Commonwealth with a short-term view towards covering budgetary shortfalls and fails to provide the protection of Kentucky consumers and real dollars to the Commonwealth's taxpayers that a regulated market would provide. "This is a cynical big government money grab of private consumer dollars to pay for political excesses," said PPA Executive Director John Pappas. "This entire lawsuit is based on a long-shunned 19th century sore loser statute, which is about as applicable today as the anti-dueling laws still on the books. The Commonwealth has spent countless resources and time figuring out how to extort money from online poker companies when they could have spent that time creating a safe and regulated market that would have raised equal or greater amounts of money to benefit the consumers and taxpayers of the Commonwealth both now and in the future. The affected players should be the ones who collect from this suit, not the government and certainly not the attorneys." The PPA represents approximately 14,000 Kentucky residents who are calling for Kentucky to enact laws that license and regulate online poker in the Commonwealth. PPA is represented in this matter by the Kentucky law firm LYNCH, COX, GILMAN & GOODMAN, P.S.C. The following statement from Eric Hollreiser, vice president, corporate communications, Amaya Inc., is in response to the Poker Players Alliance motion to join the Commonwealth of Kentucky's lawsuit against certain PokerStars entities and former affiliates. "We welcome the intervention of the Poker Players Alliance to this suit and believe they represent the true interests of Kentucky residents and Kentucky poker players. While we do not believe the suit has merit and will continue to pursue the case in the courts, if there is a monetary judgement it should go toward the consumers who played on PokerStars and not to line the pockets of opportunistic plaintiff's attorneys." |