Not at all. A Poker Site didn't make any claims of guaranteed returns on your 'investment.' They probably considered player deposits to become virtual Poker Dollars, that have no legal value.
>>> A Poker Site didn't make any claims of guaranteed returns on your 'investment.'
This is irrelevant. They didn't need to make any guarantees on investment, they just needed more players. Just because they didn't need to bait people to play doesn't mean it wasn't a Ponzi scheme.
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from existing capital or new capital paid by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation"
That might be a too-generous interpretation. They could also be bad at business, which is pretty common. With some people it's more, "Hey, there's a pile of money in this account. I like money! Why don't I take some."
The separation of accounts is very much a learned set of disciplines. Some never learned it, and some just don't get it.
