The consequences are not fully visible yet and the agreement between Pokerstars, FullTilt and the Department of Justice to regain the right to use their world wide .com domains went through pretty quickly. American players are now able to log into their accounts on both sites again and can access the cashier to request a withdrawal. This has currently been disabled at Pokerstars to “prepare the technical solutions and formulate the plan and processes required” to allow Americans to cash out their balance.
The same deal would also be available for AbsolutePoker and UB, however despite pop up notifications on both brands Americans are still able to log in and play for real money. Today, AbsolutePoker released the following statement:
“Absolute Poker has retained Blank Rome LLP as United States counsel to provide legal advice in relation to civil and criminal matters filed in federal court in Manhattan and made public on April 15, 2011. Absolute Poker is aware that on April 19, 2011, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York entered into separate agreements with FullTilt Poker and PokerStars. These agreements concern the use of the respective www.fulltiltpoker.com and www.pokerstars.com domain names. The US Attorney, in a press release dated April 20, 2011, stated that the government is willing to enter the same agreement with Absolute Poker and UB.
“At this time, Absolute Poker’s top priority is, and must be, the refund of balances to its and UB’s US players. However, given the far-reaching consequences of the US Attorney’s actions for Absolute Poker and for the entire poker community, Absolute Poker believes that the responsible course of action is to review with its attorneys the relevant court filings before taking any action."
“Absolute Poker believes that the US Attorney shares the view that refunds to US players are an immediate and pressing concern, and Absolute Poker wishes to make clear that it wants to work cooperatively with the US Attorney to safely and efficiently return its players’ funds. To that end, Absolute Poker’s counsel has initiated communications with the US Attorney’s office and plans to continue proactively advancing those discussions."
“Further information and timely updates will be provided to Absolute Poker/UB’s players as we move forward.”
In the meanwhile, an article at The Australian revealed, that Australian banks have been handling payments to overseas-based online poker sites that have been illegally taking up to a $1 billion a year. Whilst this might be legal for gambling sites outside of Australia, it is prohibited for Australia itself since 2001 already. The potential profit for local companies was probably too tempting though and part of this business was also FORMER Brisbane IT tycoon Daniel Tzvetkoff, who’s company Intabill allegedly processed more than $500 million worth of illegal online payments through US banks.
It has been reported that he kept the names, bank details and addresses of up to 500,000 customers of online poker websites – considering that he has turned into an informant for the FBI and Department of Justice during the current investigation and provided these details, we may not have seen the end of the allegations yet. At least the situation has somewhat calmed down after the agreement from PokerStars and FullTiltPoker with the DoJ and hopefully soon, American players will be able to cash out their funds from the poker sites.
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