feds freeze accts used to pay online poker players
jlbsquared
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In an operation that began last week, the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York froze or issued seizure orders for bank accounts in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Arizona held at Wells Fargo, Citibank, Goldwater Bank and Alliance Bank of Arizona.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office had no comment.
The accounts are managed by Allied Systems Inc., and Account Services, which handle cash for popular online poker sites, including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. Though the money belongs to the poker players, it is held for them in accounts managed by the two service companies.
Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn't accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out, said lawyer for the company, Jeff Ifrah. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won't be able to cash them, he said.
The seizures come as a debate over Internet gambling heats up in Washington. Last month, U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) introduced a bill that would legalize and regulate Internet gambling.
Federal authorities say online gambling is illegal, but Internet-gambling advocates say it is a gray legal area. In 2006, Congress passed a law making it illegal for banks to processing payments for unlawful Internet gambling. Critics say the law is unclear.
Poker players don't consider poker a game of chance, but a game of skill, and argue that poker shouldn't be lumped in with sports betting, for example.
The government has prosecuted Internet gambling in the past, including sites that allow users to bet on sports and play poker. The massive seizure by the U.S. attorney is the first time federal authorities have targeted online poker accounts, according the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based lobbying group for online poker players.
The Alliance said there are 10 million Americans who play online poker for money, and estimated the market at $6 billion.
The Alliance "is disappointed that this unprecedented action has been commenced against law abiding poker players," said former U.S. Senator and Alliance Chairman Alfonse D'Amato in a written statement.
I used to be a Party poker fiend but learned
<< <i>SteveK any comments? >>
Well, we all know about the Neteller incident - first I've heard of this.
Frankly, I'm surprised at this because I thought that under an Obama administration, and of course it's well known that Barney Frank is leading the charge to legalize online poker, and Obama himself is a poker player although not online, and with the Democrat Party being the majority in both Houses of Congress...that online poker had a decent chance to be legalized.
My gut reaction is that perhaps Obama has "liberalized" and "socialized" things too quickly, and this could be sorta a backlash against that...or perhaps it's not related in any way to that and this had simply been an ongoing investigation and it just happened to spring into enforcement action now.
Perhaps there could be a backlash from Barney Frank and his buddies to give them even more determination to try to legalize online poker...or interestingly enough perhaps Barney will decide that "going too far" and legalizing internet gambling would be a bad political idea for Democrats, sorta rocking the boat too much, especially when they're getting almost everything they want at this time...they might think why get greedy and give conservatives another rallying cry in the next election.
In my opinion it's still a big step from legalizing a B&M casino whereby underage gamblers can easily be controlled through visual inspection, whereby underage gambling on the internet is rampant and difficult to control - a major stumbling block for Democrats in trying to legalize online gambling.
It's too bad that the poker players got their money frozen - We'll have to wait and see how it all plays out.
Believe it or not, considering McCain's centrist views and association with gambling interests, online poker players wanting to see online poker legalized may have been better off with a McCain victory along with a Democrat controlled Congress. Perhaps Obama is not necessarily the "friend' to online poker and increased gambling that some may believe he is - again just my opinion and we'll see how it all plays out. But I doubt if anyone is going to be in favor of permanently confiscating money from online poker players with this legal action here, but we'll see what happens.