Mike Matusow: Howard Lederer to Blame for Full Tilt Scandal, Chris Ferguson a ‘Good Guy’

Mike Matusow has spilled the beans on what he says really happened at Full Tilt Poker in the run up to Black Friday. Infamously, on April 15th 2011, players logged into their accounts only to find that the domain had been seized by the FBI, along with all the money in the accounts.

Matusow has recently kicked off a new podcast he named “The Mouthpiece”, and in the first episode we hear exactly what his role at the company was like. As a sponsored red pro he lined up alongside star names such as Phil Ivey and Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and earned more than $600,000 per year.

When the fateful day came, now almost eight years ago, Matusow was under the impression that everything would be sorted out and all players would receive what was owed. He actually thought the company was rolling in it still.

Following the scandal Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and CEO Ray Bitar were all castigated for their roles in players getting ripped off. But in Matusow’s opinion though, Ferguson did nothing wrong apart from consenting to the wrong guys running a business where he was the majority shareholder. In other words, Lederer and Bitar were all to blame.

While Matusow certainly is a character that is well known around the scene and gets to hear a lot of what comes down the grapevine, we can’t take this as any kind of confirmation. It’s also highly suspect that after all these years Ferguson is yet to make any kind of complete explanation. When he reappeared on the live circuit a couple of years ago we thought the whole story might come out but it never did.

Hopefully Matusow will be pressed to give us more on what went on behind the scenes at Full Tilt Poker before the dream ended.