Online Casino

When the UIGEA came into force and the U.S. government made it illegal for online payment processors to accept financial transactions from online gambling websites pertaining to U.S. citizens, many of those payment processors were caught off guard and had funds seized for breaking the rules. One of those payment processors, Account Services Corporation (ASC) which is based in southern California's San Diego suffered seizures of approximately $40 million and is now fighting to get some of it back.

ASC is currently seeking the return of around $14 million that was seized by authorities from the United States Department of Justice as part of the total funds seized from them during the crackdown on online gambling transactions involving U.S. gamblers.

On July 10th, a motion filed by Michael Panzer of the San Diego attorney's office (United States District Court for Southern California) included two bank accounts from Union Bank and Wells Fargo Bank that were used for the processing of payments from online poker sites. At the time, a warrant was served to Wells Fargo bank who had approximately $13 million seized, but a warrant-less seizure of around $1 million was made from Union Bank although one was eventually supplied about two weeks afterwards.

These seizures made against ASC affected about 13,800 poker players from Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. The players were swiftly repaid by the two poker sites, pending the matter's legal resolution.

ASC have raised several arguments to validate their claim, including that the seizures are alleged to have been carried out citing a 2026 statute called the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA) which it claims are inapplicable as this statute was not violated. They further claim that as the funds were the property of individual poker players, they could not have broken the law according to the IGBA.

They also revisit the argument that online poker does not constitute gambling illegally because of the game's skill element. The IGBA statute states that gambling is defined as:

  "pool-selling, bookmaking, illegal slot machines, roulette wheels or dice tables, and conducting lotteries, policy, bolita or numbers games, or selling chances therein"

This clearly does not include games of skill such as poker. On Friday The Poker Players Alliance with its million members issued a statement supporting the motion and fully endorsing the several arguments included by ASC in their filing, most especially that playing online poker predominantly requires skill and is not an illegal gambling activity such as that which is prohibited by the current Federal Laws.