A surprise appearance by Black Friday indictee Chad Elie on Twitter, accompanied by a smattering of documentation hinting at tantalizing industry links, has many industry watchers clamoring for more information.
Elie, who is scheduled to report to prison in early 2013 for his role in processing payments between banks and US-facing online poker sites PokerStars and Full Tilt, appeared without advance notice on Twitter over the past weekend.
Though his identity remains officially unconfirmed, the documents and pictures linked to Elie’s presumed “@BlackFridayChad” Twitter account appear unlikely to be the work of an imposter. Several independent sources, including this writer and the British author of an upcoming book on Black Friday, James Leighton, confirm the authenticity of several of the accountholder’s statements [update: Journalist “Diamond Flush” has also since confirmed that the account is real].
Documents released so far include a personal photo of Elie with Nevada Senator Harry Reid and a partially redacted letter featuring an online-payment-processing legal conversation that included prominent poker attorney Tom Goldstein.
Goldstein, then of the Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld law firm, also shares industry connections with PokerStars and the Poker Players Alliance. Goldstein represented poker’s skill-game aspects as advocated by the PPA in a landmark ruling issued by Eastern District of New York federal judge Jack Weinberg earlier this year.
Elie’s first Twitter slap went at former Full Tilt owner / boardmember and Tiltware president Howard Lederer. Elie directly rebuked Lederer’s claim in recent interviews that he had nothing to do with Full Tilt’s payment processing activities. Posted Elie:
“I never met with a payment processor”-Howard Lederer. Interesting Howard,do you not remember the MEETINGS we had?What about NYE?5hr meeting
Elie then accused former Utah payment processors Jeremy Johnson and brothers Jason and Todd Vowell of stealing two weeks of online-processing funds, some $30m, from Stars and Tilt.
Johnson and the Vowells have already been implicated in other fraudulent online marketing schemes, apart from the world of online poker. In Twitter replies to this writer and other posters, Elie referenced a recent civil lawsuit he brought against Johnson, the Vowells, and two other defendants.
In that action, Elie sought among other things a temporary restraining order in an attempt to have documentation relating to the SunFirst Bank (UT) processing activities from being destroyed. That case, filed in December of 2010, was dismissed two months later, with Elie claiming to have voluntarily dropped the case after the FTC stepped in.
Elie has promised to release additional information in the coming weeks regarding the roles played by Jeremy Johnson and others with connections to SunFirst and the related payment-processing operations.
