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...

i deposited 2 echecks and pstars didnt receive it and they are harping me about the money, wtf, go get the DoJ

i cashed out 1,000$ by ehcecksw on May31st, still havent received it yet. Email says to wait 3-10 business days but I'm also pessimistic. The USA sucks sometimes.

sometime ago i was like " lucky americans their country makes them so easy to live etc" and now im like " thx god im not american" : )

not being able to use e check for a span of what 5 days makes you glad you don't live in america???

yeah i have 2.1k from stars that has not showed up

never said we dont want to live in America.

It's just sad to see the way the tone of America is going. It worries me that eventually the Government will end up dictating everything in our lives. The Slippery Slope. Government gets the foot in the door and keeps kicking until its wide open and they take everything. Don't want to see the USA wind up like the government was in the book 1984.

no no no you mis understood me. i was talking to darki but i just wanted to avoid a country flame war. i shoulda just kept my mouth shut

On June 10 2009 19:30 sniderstyle wrote: never said we dont want to live in America. It's just sad to see the way the tone of America is going. It worries me that eventually the Government will end up dictating everything in our lives. The Slippery Slope. Government gets the foot in the door and keeps kicking until its wide open and they take everything. Don't want to see the USA wind up like the government was in the book 1984.

Whats happening today has nothing to do with the gov't getting its foot in the door, nor trying to impede on individual freedoms. This is all the result of one man, who sadly earned the rank and power to be in a position to sneak in a bill attached to another bill so it would go unnoticed. That bill is the UIGEA, and was introduced to appease his self-righteous followers and earn him points to maintain his power. Now for some reason others are using this bill as a vice to attack gambling for no other reason than because they can. Without the UIGEA none of this would be happening. It's disgusting how much damage and turmoil one cocksucker can cause. Just one fucking bill snuck into a 500 page document and the entire online gambling system practically falls apart.

Requested 2.5k on 5/31, haven't received it. FML

Does Pokerstars offer paperchecks as well? Have those been bouncing?

was wondering about paper checks too

ROFL USA

this is rly bad for online poker FML

fuck i might have to move to canada...... noooooooooooooooooo

i cash out to mybank even thought there is a dumb fee but its safe!!

I cashed 10k and got an extra 700 in my poker accounts because they had to cancel the checks so as long as I eventually get to cash out ill be up 700 from this fiasco

On June 10 2009 22:43 blackjacki2 wrote: Does Pokerstars offer paperchecks as well? Have those been bouncing?

yep, cashed out 5k not too long ago and they e-mailed me saying the bank account that was handling these funds have been frozen.

I guess my real question is, if they claim they have a way to reimburse everybody and that this is just one of many accounts they use, why dont they just use another account instead of re-depositing the money on their software with 10% more? They're acting like someone ducking the mob by saying stuff like "I'll pay you double tomorrow, I promise!"

Anyone know if this is affecting FTP eChecks? I click their echeck option and I get no error stating it's unavailable.

On June 11 2009 02:23 blackjacki2 wrote: I guess my real question is, if they claim they have a way to reimburse everybody and that this is just one of many accounts they use, why dont they just use another account instead of re-depositing the money on their software with 10% more? They're acting like someone ducking the mob by saying stuff like "I'll pay you double tomorrow, I promise!"

i got an e-mail from them saying that I am getting my payment now from a different account.

sadly, i wanted the +10%

emoney is really emoney now lolz
gonna buy myself an e-car with my br soon

so uh...is poker stars fucked?

On June 10 2009 22:00 NewbSaibot wrote: Show nested quote + On June 10 2009 19:30 sniderstyle wrote: never said we dont want to live in America. It's just sad to see the way the tone of America is going. It worries me that eventually the Government will end up dictating everything in our lives. The Slippery Slope. Government gets the foot in the door and keeps kicking until its wide open and they take everything. Don't want to see the USA wind up like the government was in the book 1984. Whats happening today has nothing to do with the gov't getting its foot in the door, nor trying to impede on individual freedoms. This is all the result of one man, who sadly earned the rank and power to be in a position to sneak in a bill attached to another bill so it would go unnoticed. That bill is the UIGEA, and was introduced to appease his self-righteous followers and earn him points to maintain his power. Now for some reason others are using this bill as a vice to attack gambling for no other reason than because they can. Without the UIGEA none of this would be happening. It's disgusting how much damage and turmoil one cocksucker can cause. Just one fucking bill snuck into a 500 page document and the entire online gambling system practically falls apart.

post of the year

The unnamed third room is probably UB. I requested a cashout that the check got canceled

On June 10 2009 18:59 Darki wrote: sometime ago i was like " lucky americans their country makes them so easy to live etc" and now im like " thx god im not american" : )

you are south american, fish

I hope they get their money back...