judge freezes accounts

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/31192062/

WASHINGTON - An advocacy group for online poker said Tuesday that the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players.

The Justice Department long has maintained that Internet gambling is illegal, a view that the poker group challenges.

The Poker Players Alliance told The Associated Press that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York instructed three banks — Citibank, Goldwater Bank and Alliance Bank of Arizona — to freeze the accounts.

ohn Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, called the government’s move an “unprecedented action” against online poker players.

In a letter Monday night to Devlin-Brown, Pappas requested that his group be notified and given the opportunity to be heard regarding attempts to seize the frozen funds.

He said that “seizure of Allied Systems’ bank accounts would constitute a violation of due process because there are no exigent circumstances to justify deprivation of PPA members’ property without prior notice and a hearing.”

“The PPA will pursue every legal course available to ensure that poker players’ funds are not seized and their right to play poker online is protected,” Pappas wrote.

In the interview, Pappas said 20,000 player accounts were affected, but that his group has received assurances from online poker sites that the players would be fully compensated.

A 2006 law prohibits financial institutions from accepting payments from credit cards, checks or electronic fund transfers to settle online wagers. The Justice Department viewed Internet gambling as illegal even before that.

In a statement, the alliance chairman, former New York Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, said the frozen funds belonged to individual poker players, not poker Web sites.

“This money should be immediately released by the Southern District to ensure that player payouts are not further disrupted,” he said.

The alliance, which is funded by its poker player members and the Interactive Gaming Council, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based trade association for online casinos, plans to spend $3 million lobbying this congressional session. The group supports legislation by Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, that would regulate rather than ban Internet gambling.

At least half the $16 billion Internet gambling industry, which is largely hosted on overseas sites, is estimated to be fueled by U.S.

all your monies are belong to government.

panic everybody!

you have no chance to survive make your time

no wonder i havent gotten my stars cashout yet.

wtf..

no one is talking what site or payment processor this is...hmmm

This is dumb... It doesn't take a genius to figure out that poker=/=gambling.

It's the governments own fault that all the online poker sites work out of random tiny countries and Indian reserves. I can understand that they want their share which is somewhat understandable but simply trying to outlaw it is baad.

someone set us up the bomb.

On June 10 2009 00:14 whamm! wrote: no one is talking what site or payment processor this is...hmmm

At http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/10poker.html
it states it includes PS and FTP

which I guess explains why I haven't got my PS cashout for 1.5 weeks

wtf.. so what's the plan going forward? should I try to cash out? not even bother playing? Is there anymore information about pokerstars cashouts not working?

The frozen payments of at least $33 million are owed to 27,000 players at four offshore poker sites, including PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, according to John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, an advocacy group for online poker players. Mr. Pappas said prosecutors in the last two weeks have asked Citibank, Wells Fargo and two smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to two companies, Allied Systems and Account Services, that process payouts on behalf of the poker sites. The government action came to light over the weekend after checks issued to poker players by the two companies began bouncing, Mr. Pappas said. He said that the online casinos had assured him that they planned to pay players what they were owed.

so i guess we're still gonna get our money some way
but this is a really fag move by the gov't

fuck no wonder my 2.1k isnt in yet

dump all ur money to me, we have no laws here i can send the 80% of it later to you.

pm me if interested

Take off every 'ZIGmund'!!

now what? i guess this is what i get for keeping so much money on stars

Uhhh.
How bad is this? It sounds pretty bad but I'm hoping I'm wrong?

someone smart tell me what this means for me

wow this sounds horrible..

Hi All,

Understandably, many of you have concerns regarding certain bank accounts with poker players' money being frozen in the US, and I'd just like to reassure everyone that your funds remain safe and secure at FTP, and the processing of withdrawal requests is proceeding as normal and is still available to all of our players. I've been gathering information on our side to address some of the rumors and conjecture that have been flying around, and here's what I know:
We have multiple check processors. Only one processor was affected by the current situation, and we don't expect any further interruption in check withdrawals or any other withdrawal methods.
All players who were affected by this issue have had their money returned to their Full Tilt Poker account and all withdrawals are processing normally.
We always make sure we can cash out any of our players at any time. You should never have to worry that you won't get your money, and we're doing everything we can to ensure you always have plenty of methods available for both deposits and withdrawals.
eCheck deposits are temporarily unavailable, but we expect it to return as a deposit option sometime this week or next.
I'm not sure where this particular rumor started, but there are absolutely no plans to leave any market.
If you have any questions, or would like to know if there are more deposit or withdrawal options available that haven't appeared in your cashier, please contact support and they will be happy to help you out.

Click on the following link for an official statement from Full Tilt Poker regarding the frozen funds.
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/official-statement-online-poker-withdrawals
Doug


read this from FTPdoug on twoplustwo

FTP and pokerstars would try to reassure everybody even if they were in over their heads.

I'm more concerned by the fact that people are getting their money returned to them +10%. How can they afford to give 10% of potentially someone's entire bankroll for free. It makes your bankroll sound like play money. Like should I purposely try to cashout so I can get my money + 10% returned to my account?

Ugh this doesn't sound good :/

All bluff.

Unless someone notable in the poker community says that his/her account has been closed, I call it bluff.

Government should know better than to bluff poker players.

Nice call.

i tried to cashout 1k by check and the check didn't clear and 2 days later it was back in my account +100$ ;

i just tried to bankwire 6k tho lets see

On June 10 2009 05:26 DooMeR wrote: i tried to cashout 1k by check and the check didn't clear and 2 days later it was back in my account +100$ ; i just tried to bankwire 6k tho lets see

I'd be hella worried if the 6k returns with +$600 lol

But the real question is, is it plus EV if I tried to withdraw $1k right now hoping to get the same $100? LOL

poker=/=gambling.

Poker obviously is gambling. What do you mean by gambling if poker doesnt qualify?

Another matter is if there is something wrong with gamblnig.

ok thx guys, i will withdraw most my br now...

Is this why PS tells me that "eChecks is currently unavailable"?

That's it, I'm moving to Canada.

Is this affecting other countries or just US?

As in, if I cashout and the money has to go through a US bank first, will it get held up?

On June 10 2009 08:04 PandaSaurus wrote: Is this affecting other countries or just US? As in, if I cashout and the money has to go through a US bank first, will it get held up?

it's only US

all bluff? I think u misread Twisted

On June 09 2009 23:57 Stim_Abuser wrote: An advocacy group for online poker said Tuesday that the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players.

land of the free baby
Uncle Sam = Father Sam and daddy wants his piece

uuuuh...

Lolmerica.

was this not in that article when u read it Stim? This is key

I wonder what the feasibility in opening an off-shore bank account to handle these transactions would be. Anyone know if a US citizen can open up an account in the central bank of London or something and just wire transfer their own funds back to the states?

I wouldnt be too concerned anyway. Look at the sum of money we're talking about here. Theres no way stars and ftp and any others are interested in losing 30 million dollars worth of business, and that is just current funds. We all know how many hundreds of millions of dollars they make running these operations, they're not about to abandon this business.

god dammit.

i pay taxes just like everyone else, get off my fucking back.

good bye online poker

get off ur back?
it's only just begun my friend

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/playe...=13914398&ch=4226716&src=news

Here is a video about the seizure, John Papas one of the PPA heads is in the video along with John Kelly a former prosecutor and full time life cunt.

Pretty good video imo, John Papas does a really good job of getting across good facts about the sites and how the regulate themselves and how regulation will only help out the sites

it's dangerous for people who lose money

if you move out of the US, you still have to pay taxes for 10 years!!!!!!!!!! LOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

omfg that video tilts the shit out of me

bleh i have a question

i cashed out $2500 from stars via e-checks on June 2nd. the "3-10 business days" period isn't quite up yet, but i'm not feeling too good about it in light of this.

anyway, i kind of need to cashout at least a couple grand before July, some way or another. I've never requested a (physical) check before, but according to PS website checks over $1k are supposed to take 7 business days, is this option still completely safe/reliable? T_T

ok so has anyone been able to get their money out recently?

ya John Q Kelly is prime example of who and what my quote vvvvvvv pertains to

Assuming the money is all returned, couldn't this be a good thing? It'll force the issue to the top so that the government can't just ignore it and will have to officially call it illegal or legalize it?

well the check i got didn't clear so i dont know

America fuck yeah!!!

On June 10 2009 16:53 DooMeR wrote: well the check i got didn't clear so i dont know

ugh

well at least on the bright side i don't have aids

On June 10 2009 17:06 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On June 10 2009 16:53 DooMeR wrote: well the check i got didn't clear so i dont know ugh well at least on the bright side i don't have aids

(afaik)

On June 10 2009 16:53 Vivi57 wrote: Assuming the money is all returned, couldn't this be a good thing? It'll force the issue to the top so that the government can't just ignore it and will have to officially call it illegal or legalize it?

yes I see it as possibly a good thing but from a different angle
I didn't want to be the first to say this again but fk it noone else will

hopefully it will help wake ppl up Americans up and ppl Americans will be against government intervention/regulation all together in this issue and say hey it is my money and I can do what I want with it

there really isn't many better places to take this stance than poker imo as not everyone is playing for a living and therefore there should NOT be a taxation/ regulating process imposed onto everyone in the "land of the free"

the game of skill debate is a joke and far from the actual issue here
but alas the masses think the gov is the answer/solution
so let's allow regulation/taxation on all your interests

On June 10 2009 14:13 CrownRoyal wrote: god dammit. i pay taxes just like everyone else, get off my fucking back.

On June 10 2009 16:50 bigredhoss wrote: bleh i have a question i cashed out $2500 from stars via e-checks on June 2nd. the "3-10 business days" period isn't quite up yet, but i'm not feeling too good about it in light of this. anyway, i kind of need to cashout at least a couple grand before July, some way or another. I've never requested a (physical) check before, but according to PS website checks over $1k are supposed to take 7 business days, is this option still completely safe/reliable? T_T

if they r freezing e-checks then they will freeze paper checks too. Paper checks r 100 times easier to catch and stop..last year I had a paper check frozen but when they did an e-check for the same amount and the same company it worked fine.

On June 10 2009 16:42 DooMeR wrote: omfg that video tilts the shit out of me

lol the feds aren't concerned about ur taxes, they are concerned with the huge revenue being pulled in by the sites that they are not getting any action on

it therefor must be that there is something illegal going on and so it must all be stopped - until everything gets sorted out and they get their piece of the action
once that is given they will lift the ban so don't worry ur pretty little heads there
think of it like a toll road and ur a passenger with Stars/FTP driving
u stop til they pay

the question to that becomes since ur always in the car and now that it costs the driver more...will the driver charge u for "gas" due to them paying an unnecessary toll?

fuck I really need to cash out like $1k pretty soon.. this is seriously the absolute worst time for this to happen. -__-

On June 11 2009 01:47 BalloonFight wrote: fuck I really need to cash out like $1k pretty soon.. this is seriously the absolute worst time for this to happen. -__-

+1...i want my money wtf do i do

FTP has been doing cashouts via Western Union. Its only 1k/24 hr max, but it generally takes less than a day from cashout to money in hand.

Fwiw, I cashed out yesterday and it got cleared today.

what a hassle. cashed out via e-check on may 31st didnt get anything for two weeks, had to send PS a copy of my bankstatement today and they send me this:

Hello William,

Thank you for sending the requested information.

We are currently following up on your cashout status with our provider.

In order to avoid you further inconveniences, we have pre-credited your
PokerStars account with the amount of your missing eCheck cashout while the
processor investigates the status of this transaction. A confirmation email
under "Cashout Unsuccessful" provides details of your transaction.

We will relay any updates to you if needed, we are sorry for any
inconvenience caused by this unforeseen delay.

If you would like to request a new cashout, you can do so via paper cheque,
or via Bank Wire for a minimum of $1,000.00

Please contact us back with any further questions or concerns.

Best regards,

Maggie C.
PokerStars Payment Services


I hope these DOJ confiscations don't continue.

On June 11 2009 05:20 Bigbobm wrote: FTP has been doing cashouts via Western Union. Its only 1k/24 hr max, but it generally takes less than a day from cashout to money in hand. Fwiw, I cashed out yesterday and it got cleared today.

Aren't the WU Fees huge? Like 10% to send? Or is that just for personal stuff (like when we deposit).