The DoJ strikes again - BlackMonday?!

Just about one month after the crackdown and domain seizure of FullTilt, PokerStars and AP/UB has passed and April 15th 2011 may forever remain as BlackFriday in the history of online poker. But as already assumed, this was not the only thing that will happen and now just appears to be the beginning of an unstoppable shockwave that goes through the online poker scene in the United States.

An affidavit from a Maryland Homeland Security special agent reveals many interesting details already and according to an official press release of the Maryland Department of Justice (DoJ), many government agencies were involved in the investigation. A total of 10 domains has been seized, but this time the banners don't display the FBI as 2nd partner in crime, but rather the Homeland Security.

• Bookmaker.com
• Truepoker.com
• Doylesroom.com
• Beted.com
• Betehorse.com
• Betgrandesports.com
• Goldbnarchcasino.com
• Funtimebingo.com
• 2Betdsi.com

More details are getting published, one of the most interesting is surely the news article in the Baltimore Sun. As a direct result of this, indictions against two gambling processors have been released. The first charges against K23 Group Financial Services (BMX Entertainment) and Ann Marie Puig state “conducting gambling business” and money laundering. The second charges ThrillX Systems, Ltd (BetED.com) are directed at Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk and contain the same allegations as well.

Both indictments specifically mention online sports betting “a gambling business involving online sportsbetting”, but no other forms of online gambling are included, whereas Doylesroom and Truepoker don't have any sportsbook activity at all and may get out of it. All other sites on the Yatahay network though that also operate sportsbooks have recently pulled out and informed affiliates that they can no longer pay commissions. I guess this should have been the first warning signal already and you can check out an interesting post on RoundersRadio.

Bet DSI said “Offering poker has always been an add-on with hopes of keeping our sports players who also enjoy a bit of poker at BetDSI.com, therefore we have added the sportsbook directly into the poker clients, and will be offering our poker players notifications of upcoming games, halftimes, etc.”

Even though there is no official statement yet, it appears that TruePoker and DoylesRoom are guilty by association with the other sportsbooks on the Yatahay network and they may get their .com domains back in the next few days. It remains unclear as of now though, which specific influence the payment processors have on the online poker activities.

Earlier today Bradley Franzen, one of the 11 individuals named in the indictment against PokerStars, FullTilt and AP/UB as well as a number of payment processors from April 15th 2011 ("BlackFriday"), plead guilty to lesser charges in a Manhattan court today. You can guess already that he has not done this because he is a nice guy, he will contribute towards the investigations with a testimony against some of the other individuals named in the indictment and will probably get out of it with a deal similar to Daniel Tzvetkoff, who has been caught a year ago and helped the FBI to get the ball rolling.

11 bank accounts in total have been seized as well and one of them appears to be the american Quicktender bank account that has been used for the processing. You can read a quick follow up in this blog post: Important Quicktender / UseMyWallet follow up!

Stay tuned for the next updates, as the action will soon move out of Maryland as well ... I also can't wait for the official name for this "incident". BlackMonday is one option, but since it may soon be another massacre we can also consider RedMonday as a possibility as well.