Posted on 04/15/2011 1:23:56 PM PDT by NYRepublican72
The founders of the three largest online poker sites were indicted by the FBI on Friday in what could serve as a death blow to the thriving industry.
Eleven executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker were charged with bank fraud and money laundering in an indictment unsealed in a Manhattan court. Two of the executives were arrested on Friday morning in Utah and Nevada. Federal agents are searching for the others.
Prosecutors are seeking to immediately shut down the sites and to eventually send the executives to jail and to recover $3 billion from the companies. By Friday afternoon Full Tilt Poker’s site displayed a message explaining that “this domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
And online gambling was just legalized in Washington DC. Coincidence?
They was TRICKED, I tell ya!!!
The government hates competition.
So now all of the sites will move offshore.
Plus, the fun of poker is playing the person at the table, right? It's an especially social game, in that regard.
No split of the Loot.
They are already offshore!
Wow I feel so much safer now. Lame.
They are already offshore. Half the guys who own the sites live in like Costa Rica or Isle of Mann. The only result is that some of these sites are now not allowing Americans to gamble in money tournaments.
The US government is stupid. If they had half a clue, they'd pass the bill legalizing it. The last thing I want is the government's hand in another cookie jar, but you'd think they'd get significant tax revenue from allowing online poker.
Agree completely. On top of what you said it’s rather hard to pick up tells on-line.
looks like their going to take the money along with what ever the players had kind of like GM stock holders ,
Is there anything the federal government feels that it doesn’t have the right to do? I’d like to know, so maybe I could feel that there is some semblance, some remnant, some crumb of freedom left in this country.
I heard they were using marked cards.
But the executives that were arrested were in Utah and Nevada, a lot harder to do that when the executives are in Moscow.
The F-B-I shut down Wall Street?????
/s
They already were offshore. The FBI seized the domains, not the physical equipment. Since ICAAN is in the USA, we pretty have complete control over domains.
And it’s just the websites that are down, for now. The poker software probably just points directly to the server and works fine.
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