More than five years after the Black Friday indictments, Full Tilt Poker co-founder Howard Lederer has publicly apologized to players victimized by the site’s inglorious implosion.

On Thursday, one day after Full Tilt owner Amaya Gaming merged the site with its main PokerStars brand, a statement by Lederer was posted to Daniel Negreanu’s Full Contact Poker journal. Negreanu, who was among Lederer’s most vociferous critics following FTP’s demise, said his posting of the statement was “neither an endorsement or a condemnation.”

FTP’s bank accounts were frozen by the US Department of Justice on April 15, 2011, leading to the embarrassing disclosure that FTP principals had been treating customer deposits like their own personal piggy bank. Were it not for a fiscal bailout by then-PokerStars owners Isai and Mark Scheinberg, FTP’s players could still be waiting for their money.

Lederer’s statement says he takes “full responsibility for Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday.” While claiming that he was “no longer overseeing day to day operations” after “stepping away” from FTP in 2008, Lederer admits that his “inattention in the two years leading up to Black Friday imperiled players’ deposits.”