Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker look to be heading down a ghostly path as today marked the day where the United States of America’s Department Justice SHUT THEM DOWN. Not only did they take these US poker sites domain names and input a blank Federal warning page, but they also forced the poker client to completely deny players from sitting in at real money cash games.
The DOJ went after the most popular sites on the planet, and now Party Poker will once again be named the largest online poker site.
Poker sites that were unaffected by this recent act by the US government were Cakepoker.com (the now largest US accepted site).
What players want to know is if their money is safe? As an author and one who has followed online poker legislation daily for the past 7 years I believe it is. Over the years when the UIGEA was passed which many may not even recall anymore (it was a law to try and ban online gambling in the US in 2006) many poker sites left the United States. For the most part all players were paid out except for those who had money in small, shady poker rooms.
Most closesly related to this current scenario would be the Neteller Poker case where millions of poker players dollars were held by the US department of Justice, while the founders of Neteller were put in jail. Eventually the United States paid all US citizens their money back and after countless phone calls to the New York DOJ, I was unable to obtain any information about the whereabouts of the billionaire founders of Neteller. Neteller continues to operate to this day….just outside of the United States, of course after heavy fines were paid.
I expect to see no owner of a poker site go to jail for any lengthy period of time, but instead pay extremely heavy fines. While these fines may seem like a lot, when you’re making $1-3 million dollars per day, for years upon years without having to pay taxes, it will be a punch in the face, but not a death blow. Sources are saying the US wants $3 billion from pokerstars, full tilt and Absolutepoker combined.
The real question is what happens now. Nobody knows, not even the poker players alliance. You can only put the dots together. First off, the companies are most likely working with the DOJ as we speak to resolve this issue as they do not want their domain name taken away. This is one of the biggest assets they have. If you log into Pokerstars and try to sit at a poker table you will get an error message not allow US real money play. My opinion would be that this is part of the negotiations, stop US real money playing immediately!
Once that mess is sorted out, fines are paid, and everything is worked out they will get their domain back, may serve minimal jail time and begin operating again but having to rely on the rest of the world. Online poker will soon be legalized in the USA and these sites will be bought out. But, that’s just one authors opinion against the unknown that is the US government.
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