U.S. DoJ Freezes $30 million in Online Poker Funds

<img src="http://admins.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/8b7ec8c7100874a09fe32d0e66a04242.jpg" align="right" style="margin:5px; border:1px solid black;">The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has frozen over $30 million in online poker funds. According to the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), those $30 million are in accounts of payment processors (such as eChecks) and includes the winnings of approximately 24.000 poker players. The Federal Government maintains that the seizure is a result of a violation of the Wire Act of 1961 and the Illegal Gambling Business Act. Rumours mention the money belongs to customers from PokerStars, Full Tilt and a third poker room.

The Poker Players Alliance released a statement on this matter:

"The PPA is disappointed that this unprecedented action has been commenced against law abiding poker players. The payment processor funds frozen by the Southern District of New York belong to individual poker players – not operators of poker websites – and do not represent the proceeds of any gambling activity, much less illegal gambling activity. This money should be immediately released by the Southern District to ensure that player payouts are not further disrupted."

"We are also concerned that the Southern District has selectively taken action against online poker when the current law regarding the activity is far from clear, and policies from various levels of government are inconsistent at best. In fact, no federal or state court has ever found a payment processor or a player accessing an Internet poker site to have violated the federal laws alleged by the Southern District in this case."

Some poker players have been complaining about difficulties in cashout operations and the whole thing looks unclear at the moment now. Full Tilt Poker has stated that the players' funds remain safe, as they say the freezing affected one of the many check processors that Full Tilt uses to support withdrawals. There are still no words from PokerStars.

Liquid Poker will keep you updated when more news become available.

Time to go storm congress?

Man, this is bad... We need Barney to up the speed on this new legislation !!!

i'm moving back to canada.

holy fucking shit....

Fuck these stupid self-righteous assholes. U.S. time to man-up and start protesting. This kind of indiscriminate freeze of 30M is unacceptable.

Wow this is horrible... Hopefully someone slaps these people.

good old continent..

poker sites went above and beyond to say "fuck you" to the US gov't with the whole eCheck system. The beauty of this system is that is can continue to respawn over and over like a weed. Alliance bank gets shut down, up comes Allied bank, and so on. There is far too much money to be made for poker sites to even consider backing down to these attempts. They will continue to find ways around it. Besides, worst case scenario we have to go back to bankcard and ATM withdrawals, which seemed to have no effect on the amount of people playing.

Do we have any actual info or is it all this same recycled statement from the PPA? Everything I've seen so far is the same 2 paragraphs repeated over and over without a second source

I actually have hope that this nonsense will force the issue into the mainstream. It doesn't seem that this seizure of funds is lawful by any stretch of the imagination so if this results in the courts having to make a ruling on idiots improperly applying an outdated rule from 1961 then so be it. Of course this is still ridiculous and I'm sorry for any one caught in the middle of this.

hope this is not go going to spread in europe..what a bad beat for poker, fk that.
any fellows lp suffering from this? and wait for his money?
gl.

i fckin love the states but this will make me move to canada if it doesn't change

Oh crap!

my friend deposited $400 to stars via e-checks. The money never arrived, so his $400 is in the hands of the courts? wtf?

ghiugHKG S"GDBF mothER FUKCING LIFE TILT SDFGDDFHAHHFDAAHDFHDF

as if poker doesnt suck Already
i wonder how much fish will be gone thiz time

On June 10 2009 15:44 SugoGosu wrote: my friend deposited $400 to stars via e-checks. The money never arrived, so his $400 is in the hands of the courts? wtf?

yeah i cashed out $2500 from stars thru e-checks last Tues. (June 2) and it hasn't shown up in my bank acct yet, the e-mail from stars said to allow 3-10 business days so i guess it hasnt been 10 days yet, but im pretty pessimistic now. lol i iddnt have internet access for like a week then i log on and see this shit wtf, fml fml fml

land of freedom

i cashed 420

havent gotten it...