Have a look at the document. He filed the motion himself — “Verified Claim of Raymond Bitar, Pursuant to Rule G of the Supplemental Rules for Admiralty and Maritime Claims” — with an Irish notary public to make it official.

I certainly don’t know the nuances of Rule G of the Supplemental Rules for Admiralty and Maritime Claims, but it seems complex enough that an attorney might-should usually be filing this kinda thing. And the lack of legal counsel’s involvement in this civil matter raises plenty of questions about the financial status of Bitar … and maybe even the motivations of various comments by Full Tilt attorneys who may or may not be still be getting paid.

So either Ray Bitar is broke, wants to appear broke (hey, it apparently worked for Daniel Tzvetkoff) … or is running some sorta triple-range-legal-merge to extract maximum value from his dwindling stack of FTP dollars while conserving favors from friends who went to law school.

This pro se filing follows Jeff Ifrah’s removing himself as attorney or record on various civil matters and class-action lawsuits against Full Tilt companies and principals, and Full Tilt lawyers skipping out on the nearly week-long AGCC hearing that resulted in further suspension of FTP’s gaming licenses.

Ifrah emerged as the first lawyer willing to speak on Full Tilt’s behalf, when he let eGaming Review know that Bitar’s feelings were really hurt after Wicked Chops Poker reported the Ireland-based CEO had been ousted as captain of the Full Tilt ship.

(Ifrah was saying in July: “We can completely deny the reports that Ray Bitar is no longer CEO. In fact that [rumour] really ruined his day yesterday. It doesn’t help anyone for sites to be reporting news that’s not true.”)

We’ll have to save for later a rundown of what Full Tilt legal representatives had said over time … it’s an interesting progression suggestive of what game Full Tilt might really have been playing at various points along the way.

Meanwhile, Chad Elie and John Campos — a payment processor and the Utah banker — have filed motions in the court that Forbes magazine calls the “first direct assault” on the DOJ’s case … essentially arguing that if poker is indeed a game of skill, then the premise for virtually all of the government’s case against online poker falls apart.

ALT HED: Neteller 2?

The banks are deflecting blame and criticism, saying they’re simply complying with a federal court’s direction. Not surprising, of course, considering they aren’t really in a position to defy their new dot-gov overseers. The non-poker media probably doesn’t even give a shit about poker players — they just care right now about the relationship between government and banks … but hey, good to know … because just like government officials found a villain in the form of online gamblers to justify fingering its way into the bigger world of cross-border internet commerce, now online poker has a potential villain in bad, old-school governmenting (relying on nearly 50-year-old laws) to justify its immediate need to revise the laws that affect our multimillion-UScitizen industry.

To understand the brass tacks of what just happened and is happening, be sure to read the NYT story here:

Web’s Poker Winners Face Delay in Collecting
(Thanks, Lana, for the link!)

In it we learn:

• Four American banks were hit with court papers — Wells Fargo, Citibank, Alliance Bank of Arizona, and one other — telling them to freeze the funds.
• In part because of the secretive nature of grand juries, it’s not yet clear whether all are court orders or just friendly requests. (Ha.) Wells Fargo’s was an order.
• Four online sites affected — Full Tilt, PokerStars, and two others.
• Southern District prosecutors told at least one bank the funds in question “constitute property involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses.”
• The accounts frozen belong to Allied Systems and Account Services, two payment processors (at least one of which seems to be based in Canada).

All fine and dandy (not), but what I found particularly interesting were the very last grafs:

The casinos and poker houses are based overseas, beyond the reach of prosecutors, who have sought to attack the businesses indirectly by going after American businesses that process transactions for offshore casinos or that advertise on their behalf.

Poker sites involved in this latest crackdown make money by taking a small part of each poker pot.

A. Jeff Ifrah, a lawyer representing Account Services, which has offices in San Diego and Canada, said that his client charged a small fee to issue checks to poker players.

Mr. Ifrah said that, to his knowledge, the government “has never seized an account that belongs to players who are engaged in what I would contend is a lawful act of playing peer-to-peer poker online.”

First, yikes if they go after companies that advertise online sites — but I guess that’s the whole dot-net thing. But beyond that, the non-poker world — just in time for Congress — is starting to understand how a rake works … and the relatively new phrase of “peer-to-peer poker online” is a step towards making the difficult distinguishment that online poker is indeed different than online gambling.