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Howard Lederer was a household name during the Poker Boom when ESPN was airing the World Series of Poker and suddenly guys like Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth became massive overnight celebrities outside of the poker world. A video (below) explains how Howard Lederer went from one of the faces of poker to the most hated man in the industry.
Off the felt, Howard Lederer was a huge part of Full Tilt Poker, an online poker site that was launched along with Chris Ferguson, Mike Matusow, Phil Ivey, and other poker celebs. Lederer was the founder of Tiltware and a board member, the parent company of Full Tilt.
Online poker’s ‘Black Friday’ was April 15, 2011. Shortly after Black Friday, the Justice Department shut down Full Tilt not just on charges of illegal gambling but also on charges of bank fraud.
As it would turn out, Howard Lederer aka ‘The Professor’ (and brother of poker pro Annie Duke) was running Full Tilt Poker like a ponzi scheme where funds from regular players on the site, like myself, were being paid out to the Full Tilt Poker owners which then meant there wasn’t enough money in the bank to pay the actual players.
In 2012, Full Tilt and Poker Stars) and the Justice Department reached a settlement agreement where Full Tilt forfeited all of their assets which were then acquired by Poker Stars who turned around and paid the Justice Department $547 million as part of the settlement and another $184 million to international poker players as part of the money they were owed.
As part of the settlement, Howard Lederer forfeited $2.5 million in assets to the Department of Justice and admitted zero wrongdoing. However, he did issue an apology to the poker community back in 2016 which can be read here on Daniel Negreanu’s website..
Much of this is covered in a recent video that has gone viral in the poker community. The video was uploaded by the PokerBoom YouTube channel where they lay out the timeline of Howard Lederer becoming arguably the most hated man in Poker.
How Howard Lederer Became The Most Hated Man In Poker
What makes Howard Lederer’s story so different from other figures who have been cast out by the poker industry is how he’s become the poster child for ‘integrity matters’ or someone faces consequences.
Prior to the Full Tilt house of cards crumbling down, Howard had won two World Series of Poker bracelets. He had $6,582,745 in live poker earnings including a $ 1,098,785 cash for winning the 2008 Aussie Millions Poker Championship. He had 44 WSOP cashes!
It feels silly to say this but I will… It’s not as if he had to cheat in order to win money, he was that good at poker. Yet Full Tilt, a site I played on regularly back in the day, was misappropriating money from countless poker players.
Unlike in the government settlement, Howard Lederer did apologize to the poker community and assume responsibility years later. In his 2016 statement, he said “I take full responsibility for the Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday. The shortfall in player deposits should never have happened. I should have provided better oversight or made sure that responsible others provided that oversight.”
As the video says, Howard Lederer’s descent from being one of the most popular figures in poker to the most hated shows that everyone in poker faces the same consequences when accountability and integrity are involved. Someone is immune from how important a person’s reputation is in the game of poker.