[P E O P L E
NEWS
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NEWS IN BRIEF
Full Tilt names Hansen as face of site
Full Tilt Poker has confirmed that former Team Full Tilt member Gus Hansen will be the “face of the site” when it relaunches next month. The Dane was among the several sponsored players who also had a share in the company before it was taken over by PokerStars in July, and is understood to have been among the more vocal in the pursuit of player repayment after the former Alderney licensee was shut down in 2011.
FORMER ZYNGA CASINO GM LEAVES COMPANY
Lo Toney oversaw the addition of bingo and casino products to core offering
Zynga Casino general manager
Lo Toney has left the social gaming operator after more than two-and-a-half years. Toney previously headed up the ?rm’s Facebook poker offering, which currently ranks second worldwide for monthly active users according to Appdata and ?fth for daily active users with 39.3m and 6.2m respectively. These ?gures make it the most popular casino game on the social network. According to AllThingsD, Toney had moved away from poker and taken on a mobile role in the months before his departure. His tenure as GM of Zynga Casino began in October last year, during which time he was responsible for poker as well as overseeing the launch of Zynga Bingo, which currently has 5.6m MAUs.
“My departure is less about Zynga and more about the vast number of opportunities that currently exist in the Valley... It is the right time for me in my career to move on,” he told the publication. In an interview with eGR last year, he said that at the time the operator had no plans to enter the real money gaming sphere, but this position changed in the months after the ?rm’s December 2011 IPO. CEO Mark Pincus said in July that a realmoney gambling launch was planned for the ?rst half of next year, and in August Zynga appointed former 888 senior vice-president of corporate and regulated markets Maytal Ginsburg Olsha to lead the project. Toney follows a number of senior ?gures in leaving Zynga over the past few months, including former COO John Schappert and chief creative of?cer Mike Verdu.
Betway appoints Paul Burton as head of payments, risk and processing
The Betway Group has appointed Paul Burton to the role of head of payments, risk and processing, in which he will manage all existing and new banking relationships and have responsibility for the launch of new banking products, as well as leading on the company’s mobile banking solutions. Burton qualified as a chartered accountant in South Africa in 1997 before moving to London, where there was an established contract market, gaining experience in various sectors.
PAYMENT PROCESSOR ELIE GETS FIVE MONTHS IN PRISON
Chad Elie becomes fourth Black Friday indictee to be sentenced
Former payment processor to Full Tilt,
PokerStars and Absolute Poker, Chad Elie, has been sentenced to ?ve months in prison by a judge in a Manhattan federal court. Elie pleaded guilty to a single count of bank fraud in March having been charged by the government with opening “bank accounts in the US, including through deceptive means, through which each of the Poker Companies received payments from US-based gamblers”. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sentenced Elie on 10 October, said the former payment processor “didn’t care whether what he was doing was legal”. “He was in a sense playing a game with the government, a catch-me-if-you-can kind of game,” Kaplan went on, according
to Bloomberg News. “That just can’t be overlooked.” After receiving his sentence, Bloomberg reports Elie as saying: “I’d just like to apologise to m y family and friends for the pain and disappointment I caused them and ask for their forgiveness.” Elie was one of the 11 people named in the Black Friday indictments of last year. He had initially pleaded not guilty, however after changing his representation in January, changed his plea to guilty just two weeks before his case was due to go to trial on 9 April. Prior to that delay, he had seen a motion to dismiss – submitted along with former SunFirst Bank part-owner John Campos – thrown out by Kaplan.
GamCare appoints former Gala Coral CEO
Problem gambling organisation Gamcare has appointed former Gala Coral chief executive Dominic Harrison to its board of trustees. Harrison, who left Gala Coral after six years in September 2010, will join the board in November. A qualified chartered accountant, he has also held senior executive roles with Grand Metropolitan, Bass and Ladbrokes, and is currently chairman of Microgaming’s Poker Network Management Board.
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