News

Tuesday, 10 May 2011 00:39

Online poker suffered a heavy blow on Friday when the top three Internet poker websites were shut down by the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office.

Amidst charges of illegal money laundering, illegal gambling and bank fraud, the websites belonging to Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker were seized and closed down. The founders and other key personnel of those three companies were arrested or are pending arrest. There are eleven defendants in total being indicted by the FBI in connection with the crimes. It has also seized five domains belonging to the companies which they used to host their online poker games. It has also issued a series of restraining orders against a total of seventy five bank accounts that are spread out across fourteen countries which they allege were used for the processing of payments.

To add to the woes of the founders and those running the three online poker sites, the Attorney's Office is seeking as much as $3billion worth of damages. Each of the defendants may be facing maximum jail sentences of thirty years along with fines of up to $1million.

On Friday, poker players visiting the websites of fulltiltpoker.com, pokerstars.com and absolutepoker.com had a nasty surprise. Instead of the familiar home pages welcoming them to the site and inviting them to enjoy a game of poker, they were greeted by an FBI notice that declared those domains had been confiscated by federal authorities, while being reminded that gambling online constitutes a federal crime.

In a statement posted by PokerStars, they informed players that they were no longer providing real money services to US based customers although account balances were all safe. For customers outside the US, it was business as usual.

A statement from the US Attorney's Office outlined their stance in that they allege the defendants had concocted a criminal fraud scheme that was designed to trick a number of US banks while effectively bribing a number of others to ensure a continued flow of large amounts of money generated by the profits from illegal gambling. They also allege the defendants engaged in bank fraud and money laundering.

There is some speculation that this latest action by the FBI is connected with the arrest last year of Australian online payment mastermind Daniel Tzvetkoff. He was charged with multi million dollar online payment fraud and money laundering offences. Interestingly, Tzvetkoff's case never went to court and he was quietly freed after agreeing to collaborate with federal agents and reveal his methods of processing huge sums of money illegally. It is believed that this information led federal agents to uncovering similar methods used by the three big online poker companies to hide their revenue flow from the authorities in the United States.

More arrests are imminent and court appearances are set to be made over the coming week.