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Nat, do not let them off the hook so easily here.

I was given reliable information that an AP employee quit over the matter of the money not being donated. This "switching marketing firms" makes zero sense, both on the surface and based upon what I was told.

Demand to know if someone really did quit over this, and if you can talk to the AP employees in charge of the whole thing back during the '06 WSOP.

This whole thing smells of a company that made things "right" after-the-fact when a potential for bad publicity arose.

Get more details here. Also get the name of the winner of the car, along with the details of the dealership it came from, etc. I know nothing about THAT scandal, but it seems interesting as well.

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I talked to the guy who ran both of the things and he explained how they each went down. I get the feeling that it was not in the forefront of their minds to make the donation. However, someone might be able to verify the following re: the popcorn.

First, the guy told me that because of Harrahs' rules, they had to buy the popcorn at around $2-$3 a pop from Harrah's and that no branding whatsoever was allowed on the bags. Second, he said the total cost of the popcorn was mid to high five figures. AP took a decent loss on the popcorn v donations even if they did plan on keeping the donations (I'm not convinced of that in the least). I'm sure someone will be able to contact Harrah's about that and confirm or refute.

I don't know what you mean by making things right after the fact. Do you think someone was going to publicize it in January or February of 2007 when AP was dealing with the issue? Or do you think they never actually sent the money? Or do you think the charity is a sham? Please be more specific about what you think went wrong here.

FWIW, I believe AP was doing this as a marketing opportunity (obviously) and the donation money raised was kind of an afterthought. No one there has really said anything to make me think otherwise. So they definitely had their best interest in mind through the whole thing. But I'm really not convinced it was some malicious attempt to keep the money if that's what you're thinking ... I'd like to see the reasoning behind that thought process.