AP Visit: I'm going to Costa Rica

[chernyakov]

I modified my post to say:

If you're going to do this you should ask them for more money to use as an investigative resource, to hire local PI, local legwork, local investigative reporters, to incentivise the above in a substantial way and remain for a period of time long enough for it to pan out.

[Gullanian]

Ummm.... btw, some other poster raised this point, are they going to let someone with no formal affiliation with the company have access to private data of the tens of thousands of non cheating users? Does Costa Rica have anything in the way of a data protection act?

[whangarei]

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the very same fact that Nat has all the great credentials you're all talking about if the same fact that makes this an excellent PR move by AP, one that they will surely reference on the path to reestablishing their credibility. With Nat's limited time and resources he will not be able to do a thorough investigation there - it will be a superficial investigation at best, and they know it however, they will be able to use this perceived transparency hugely to their advantage, and that is the whole point of this, to be able to say down the road "look we even brought one of you guys down here to ask questions."

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QFT

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so if he refuses to go they can say the same thing (we tried to open a dialogue, blah blah blah)

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This would be like 100 times less effective as a PR ploy.

[NLSoldier]

For you guys saying AP doesnt deserve a 2nd chance etc, even if nat agrees with you, do you think he would still be invited down there if he posted in this thread that his number one goal was to do everything he could to sink AP?

For this trip to happen he has to be (or at least seem) objective and open to the possiblilty of this whole mess resulting in something other than the end of absolute poker.

[ikestoys]

this thread is tilting me hard

[entertainme]

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My ultimate goal is not to sink the company. I want them to pay for their mistakes. I also want them to be a good company going forward.

Am I off base here?

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I think so. Who wants to see crooks get back on their feet after stealing millions of dollars from their players?

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I kinda agree, and I don't think it's about who goes. It's about those people not deserving a "second chance". The coverup is unjustifiable imho. That's life without parole for AP. If the same events (as we observers know them) had taken place on US soil, these people would be facing serious time in a federal joint. Yet, we're trying to help them move on?

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OK. This is what's missing. There's no guarantee that Nat will have anything positive to say after being down there. No guarantee that AP will survive this as a company.

So, given a choice of having some in person access to get more information or doing it from our keyboards, I'll pick the option to have direct access.

We may learn something. We may not.

I completely understand the sentiment that AP deserves to go down.

However, if there's any way for this situation to result in more transparency and accountability industry wide, I think that's also a worthy goal.

[shockdaworld]

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2. I am not going to bring back names and pictures. Both before and after this scandal, US people there are sensitive to having their information all over the place. It is not relevant to the issue at hand.

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Will you be able to confirm/deny some of the allegations against U.S. people thought to be directly involved?

I think you should take some video footage to use in the future for any kind of short documentary-style film about this whole situation. Doubt AP would go for that tho

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3. I plan on offering them a fair amount of advice on how I think they should handle things from here on out. Anything from letting people independently test hand histories (observed) to getting a forum representative like ftpdoug on here. I think this could make AP a much better site down the line if they have truly cleaned up their act (yet to be seen).

I don't have a vendetta against AP in particular. I want them to pay for what they did, clean up and hopefully get back whatever credibility they once had.

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Does your agreement with AP include advice for the future? If they are bringing you in to check out everything that's happened up until now, that is what you should give them. If they want suggestions about moving forward, you should be compensated on top of your original assignment.

Also, have you (or your lawyer) looked into any issues of receiving money from AP for doing consulting work as opposed to being just another player on their site? Are they just going to put money in your AP account? Actually this was probably a bad question to have answered on this forum

[Paul Levy]

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For you guys saying AP doesnt deserve a 2nd chance etc, even if nat agrees with you, do you think he would still be invited down there if he posted in this thread that his number one goal was to do everything he could to sink AP?

For this trip to happen he has to be (or at least seem) objective and open to the possiblilty of this whole mess resulting in something other than the end of absolute poker.

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Of course he has, but I'm wondering what's the rationale behind anything other than the end of AP being in order here. If a bank or a money manager tried to cover-up a scam perpetrated by some of the executives against their clients, they would be ordered to desist from doing any new business, and most likely end up being liquidated. Why does it have to be different here? Just because these folks are based in a sunny country where the US authorities have no jurisdiction?

[chernyakov]

my point is that Nat's initial assessment that this is a lose/lose situation is, in my opinion, accurate. If the circumstances surrounding the fraud are benign (with respect to a repeat performance) his time and resources in Costa Rica will not be adequate enough to establish this, and if there are more nefarious circumstances at work it is very unlikely that he will be able to discover them. As such, unless this trip is made with the intention of doing a deep investigative study of the situation then it will serve to help no one except AP, and at this time we honestly don't know if that is a just result or exactly the opposite.

[g-p]

goddammit find some evidence that PTowner can see my cards!!