Moving on......

I have decided to publish details of the events that took place leading up to tikay's Original Post in this thread on Sunday. It is my decision to do so alone, and tikay was informed prior of my intention and agreed to support this.

A few weeks ago I received a verbal communication that there could be issues surrounding a non-payment of a blonde Poker card-room balance from the account of the late Brendan Hartnett to his family. Brendan Hartnett was as many of you know "ericstoner" on blonde, who passed away in 2008.

Right at the outset I must make clear that I have not had any written communication from this individual as to the matter. The doubts about the matter were raised verbally to me.

The individual had, before speaking to me, contacted a third party (a long standing blonde member and close friend of Brendan Hartnett) who approached the family to clarify whether the payment had been received. The third party then informed me that to the best of the family's knowledge that no monies had arrived into the estate from a blonde Poker card-room account.

Faced with this information I had no choice but to investigate. At this stage both tikay and Royal Flush, together the holders of the vast majority of the blonde Poker shares, were both in Las Vegas. As it was potentially such a delicate matter for the company and the shareholders it was not an issue I was going to raise with them until I was completely sure of the facts.

I contacted our (then) card-room providers and asked a few simple questions as to the Brendan Hartnett account. What was the balance, where was it transferred to, when?

The written answer came back about ten days later, with copies of communications from the time. On a date in September 2008 the sum in the account had been transferred to Kevin Shepherd's account and Brendan Hartnett's account had been closed.

The first thing I did was check my own records to see if I had been consulted about this transfer and the reasons for it, and I hadn't, as far as I could tell.

At this point, with tikay newly returned from America, I took the short journey to Luton where I knew tikay was in attendance as this was an issue I felt I wanted to speak to him about face-to-face. This was on Sunday 18th July.

We agreed that I would speak to Kev and obtain explanations as to the transfer and to see, hopefully, how the money had been transferred to the family.

I did this at about 7pm on Tuesday 20th July. Kev asked for time to check his records, which of course was fine. At about 10pm that night we had an online conversation in which Kev stated that there had been an oversight and that the monies were in his Full Tilt account.

During the course of the conversation I established a sequence of events according to Kev. I reported these verbatim to tikay the same night.

The sequence of events as stated to me was as follows

- Kev had spoken to Brendan Hartnett's son on the day of the funeral and offered assistance with the online poker accounts and the repatriation of funds to the family

- Subsequent to that Kev had organised with Aqua that Brendan's account would be closed and the monies would be transferred to his blonde Poker account for forwarding to the family

- Kev then withdrew the monies and placed them onto Full Tilt Poker, the idea being that they would be transferred to Brendan Hartnett's account and thence onto the family

- Kev tried to contact Brendan Hartnett's son, left a voicemail but received no reply

- He spoke to tikay at the time about the matter, though tikay has no recollection of the conversation.

- Subsequently Kev forgot about the matter

- He had not played on Full Tilt since, and only on my mentioning of the matter and checking his emails remembered the balance on the account.

- He immediately offered to send the money on wherever it was required, and we agreed we would speak about that in due course.

Now at this point there are several important points

- I am not doubting the account as given to me above. I did not investigate further. It was not and is not my intention to make matters worse for Kev than they currently are, especially at what has been a difficult time for him

- I am not in any way doubting that Kev's intentions in transferring the money were honourable.

- The problem is that the money did not reach the family in 2008. The best interpretation that could be put on this is that it is a careless oversight.

This oversight has caused severe embarrassment for blonde Poker, and for the shareholders personally.

During the course of last week both tikay and I spoke and wrote to Brendan Hartnett's son to apologise for the confusion and delay. The funds were sent to the family before the end of the week.

I did not before the weekend have a chance to have a follow-up conversation with Kev as to sending the money he is holding on,by the same token Kev did not contact me. This is my fault, a function of lack of time as I was organising an event that weekend, and I know he is willing to forward the monies where required.

To conclude the chronology tikay and I met in Swansea on late Friday afternoon and went through all of the above. I had already recommended in writing the day before that I thought it inappropriate that Kev remained as a moderator. During the course of that meeting it was clear that tikay agreed.

On Saturday we together, and seperately, had discussions with James Dempsey on the issue and he was in complete support of our proposed action.

On Sunday afternoon on our return from Swansea Kev was contacted by tikay, and the Original Post on this thread was placed on the forum.

Kev currently has no right of reply to this on the forum of course, though of course there are other avenues for him to do so online. However I am happy to place a reply from him, however it reaches me whether from him or a friend, on this thread unedited.