Correction posted 11:45 PM EST.

Subject: Poker’s Scott Bell has learned that Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet’s total outstanding debt to players is $53.7 million, but their cash on hand is only between $5 million and $6 million.

These numbers came from a reliable source inside of AP management and have been corroborated by a different person inside a different department in the company. Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told us that $29.5 million of this liability is to US players. He explained that this number had been artificially lowered by US players systematically moving money to non-US accounts in an attempt to get their money off of the site sooner. He said that such attempts would not be successful.

The $5 million to $6 million figure, which is not exact, takes into account about $3 million in severance pay to Cereus’s Costa Rican employees. It does not include money that was frozen when some of Cereus’s bank accounts were seized by the United States Department of Justice on April 15th.

This news certainly does not bode well for players who have money on Cereus. Since Black Friday, non-US players have been able to slowly cash out funds, in amounts up to $2,000. However, anecdotal evidence provided by a thread on the Two Plus Two Poker Forums in which players have been discussing the two sites suggests that withdrawals for non-US players have slowed down.

This story is based on the word of anonymous sources who did not provide us with ways to independently verify their claims. Though our principal source would certainly have intimate knowledge of such things, we are unable to guarantee that the information presented here is accurate. However, we believe this story is almost certainly true, and given its importance, we decided to publish it. Though we’ve known of this story for some time, we waited until we heard the information from another source before publishing.

Correction 6/14 11:40 PM EST:

We erroneously reported that Cereus’s total outstanding debt to US players is $24.2 million. This is actually the reported debt to NON-US players. The reported debt to US players is $29.5 million, and this has been fixed in the above article. (Again, our source cautions that the total US player debt is artificially lowered by players’ attempts to transfer their money to non-US players.)

Subject: Poker apologizes for any confusion caused by our mistake.