The final installment of “The Lederer Files,” a sit-down interview with embattled Full Tilt Poker front man Howard Lederer (pictured), was featured on Friday on PokerNews. The 23-minute finale and seventh video in the series began with the closing of the deal with PokerStars, which occurred in late July.

Watch Part 7 here. Also, be sure to check out our recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Lederer was originally told that the deal with PokerStars would close on July 2: “The words that we heard often were, ‘You need to take a leap of faith and start preparing for this deal to be done on July 2.’ At that time, we might have had $10 million in the bank, but we had a lot of liabilities.” Lederer explained that Full Tilt Poker had to lower its debt by paying back vendors, thus burning its cash on hand and potentially paralyzing the site: “This deal was so good for our customers, it was the proper leap of faith to take.”

The finalization of the PokerStars deal would later get pushed back to July 9. Lederer confessed, “We left ourselves enough money to get through July, but not into August.”

Preparing for the worst, Lederer set his sights on money that Tom Dwan (pictured) owed the company. Lederer talked to Dwan in early July and confided, “I don’t know if a deal is going to happen, but our burn rate is about $1.5 million per month. If we can’t get a deal done by the end of July, can I count on you to give us the money you owe the company, which will give us another month?” Dwan agreed and said he’d give the money back in August if needed.

Full Tilt had originally reached out to PokerStars, its one-time rival, in mid-2011. “They loved the idea of being able to rescue our customers and PokerStars really cares about the poker community,” Lederer applauded. “They have handled themselves with nothing but the utmost professionalism throughout this whole process.” In 2011, PokerStars told Full Tilt that an acquisition was too complicated and expensive.

So what changed? Why would PokerStars have a change of heart? Lederer speculated, “Clearly, what changed was the uncertainty… They were making presumably significant progress talking to the DOJ and discussing a settlement. At some point, there was an opportunity for our assets to become part of that deal. Our assets were an important part of that deal for both sides.”

Midway through the interview, Lederer asked to address a blog by Matt Glantz (pictured) entitled, “The Silence of Full Tilt,” which was published in February 2012. Lederer explained why he couldn’t speak about the sale at any point: “I owed the poker community my silence. As desperate as I was to defend myself, at no time during the 15 months did I ever feel like going and doing something like [this interview] was going to help our customers get paid… We were told by the DOJ and every group we were in contact with, ‘You can’t talk about the deal.’ I wasn’t going to risk a deal so I could speak out.”

Meanwhile, players were irate and calling for Lederer’s head. Lederer justified, “The players had every right to be angry. The position they were put in was unconscionable. There was no excuse. That was their money, they deserved to get it, and they weren’t getting paid.”

Shortly after PokerNews’ interview was filmed, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a second amended complaint citing the Travel Act seeking forfeiture of Lederer’s assets. For “The Professor,” the writing was on the wall for a new law to be cited: “They think online poker is illegal. They based that belief on the Wire Act, which is now no longer been ruled to apply to pokerby the DOJ. In the amended complaint against me, they used IGBA, which with the DiCristina ruling has now been shown not to apply to poker, at least in one important courtroom.”

PokerNews COO Matt Parvis asked Lederer for his final words to the poker community and received the following response: “As an owner of Full Tilt Poker, I took and I take full responsibility for what happened. What happened wasn’t right and caused a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and in some cases just inconvenience for three million customers. That wasn’t right. For that, I am truly sorry. I look very much forward to the reopening of the site under PokerStars’ leadership. I am incredibly thankful for their incredible professionalism, the way they handled the situation. I will be rooting for the company every day.”

Lederer’s final line: “I can’t tell you how happy I am that the deal happened, that hopefully our customers are all going to be made whole, that the brand and the software will live on in their hands.”

You can discuss the series in this PocketFives thread.