"We sat there, and it was nothing but the Howard Lederer show. I mean, all he did was talk about himself and how he built a $3 billion, $2 billion company, and you know, I don't even think my poor wife at the time said one word… Howard (pictured) told me that he needed processors just like us that were transparent. He said they couldn't work with non-transparent processors anymore. I was in shock when he was being that open with me about his other processors. It's something that no one talked about."Those were the words of Black Friday payment processor Chad Elie, who sat down with Diamond Flush Poker in recent days for a lengthy interview about Elie's experience in the industry. Elie elaborated that he met Lederer on several occasions, including a Full Tilt Fourth of July party at the Golden Nugget in Downtown Las Vegas and a function featuring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Speaking on the event with Reid (pictured below), Elie claimed, "[Lederer] knew I was a payment processor. Jeremy Johnson was there, that's another payment processor he talked to."
An elaborate dialogue between Diamond Flush and Elie included the former asking the latter, "Howard knew there was a backlog, and you discussed the fact that there was this backlog with the e-checks at Full Tilt, January 1, 2011. Correct?" Elie corrected Diamond Flush to say the conversation actually took place late on December 31, 2010, or New Year's Eve.
You'll recall that in his interview with PokerNews dubbed the Lederer Files, the former Full Tilt front man told viewers, "I was never shown a balance sheet or any kind of a financial document that would have suggested we were in a severe state of financial distress before April 15, 2011."Around Black Friday, according to Elie, Full Tilt offered him lucrative rewards to process transactions to online poker players in the United States: "There was some time that Full Tilt didn't have any processing whatsoever. I was getting daily phone calls from Nelson [Burtnick], definitely a few times a week from Ray [Bitar], begging me to process the backlog. I got offered as high as 20-25% to process it." Elie rehashed that normal percentages were between 2% and 3%.
Elie was one of 11 individuals indicted on Black Friday and recounted the sight that greeted him that fateful morning: "I hear our dogs barking and the FBI screaming, 'Where's Chad? Where's Chad?' So I come out, [my wife] is in her underwear and a shirt, they come blazing upstairs as I am walking downstairs. I had my Blackberry in my hand and their guns are drawn." Elie proceeded to spend the day in jail.
Elie pleaded guilty in March and received five months behind bars, a sentence that will start on January 3. In the meantime, he has been taking via Twitter and media outlets like Diamond Flush to speak his mind.
Speaking on his legal fees, Elie explained, "At the time [of Black Friday], I didn't have any, barely any money to pay for my legal bills and what kind of case I was up against. Luckily, I had a contract with PokerStars. That's a stand-up company. They were true to their word on everything. Full Tilt, I had a contract with them [and didn't get] a penny."Elie narrated that he began working with PokerStars in 2009, processing transparent transactions. Then, things apparently went south: "Everything was perfect. Couldn't have been better, I believe, for PokerStars and Full Tilt. I don't want to speak on their behalf, but 24-48 hour funding, processing every day, settlements all the way. Up until October/November is when Jeremy [Johnson] and Jason Vowell and Todd Vowell decided to, what I believe and what I know from everything I've read and from documents, their planned heist of the player funds."
Elie also dove into his relationship with Intabill, which was run by the estranged Daniel Tzvetkoff. Elie recalled the first time he met the Aussie, whom some consider to be a primary catalyst behind Black Friday: "He was presented to me as the largest processor in the international world, thousands and thousands of clients and he was looking to invest into the payday loan market, and that in doing so, he needed processing of his own. That's where the correlation came."
Read the entire Diamond Flush interview with Chad Elie.
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