Today the USA killed the online poker industry

Presidents aren't kings, though that idea is lost on many Americans. When there isn't law, there should be no taking anybody down.

Why are US citizens, who operated legally in another country, for example in Antigua, for the Cohen fellow, prosecuted upon their return to the US?

How has the JD been able to simply confiscate huge sums of money without trial?

Nor it appears, do the Presidents...how many times of late have we seen presidents decide that getting a law passed is either impossible or too much trouble so they just do what they want to do with out Congress?? The first President that I remember noticing doing this in a major way was Clinton, but it seems to continue to get worse. We had a case not long ago where Obama could not get a law changed passed so he said "**** it" , had an agency rewrite policy, and did it that way...I cant remember what that was at the moment.
we allowed that way back in the 80's when the drug proceeds forfeiture laws passed the Supreme Court. Once you zero out the due process stipulation for one thing you have to know that from that time on the government will use that freedom when ever it chooses.

YAY!!!

It is a huge stretch for the state to argue that online gambling needs to be rubbed out when there are 4 large casinos less than an hour from my house, and when the state is in the gambling business at just about every grocery store and gas station.....

Never!!!!!


And they certainly would NEVER have demanded other countries did so also.

The tone of your posts have changed a lot over the last two years, you may not consciously realize it yet but you are figuring out how strong the challenges are going forwards. Also, while you were never one of them, most of the brain dead Pollyanna's are gone out of A2K too.

I'll wear the "prophet of doom " label with honor, tyvm.

Turns out JTT is right, there is a back story here

I have an idea. This could be a thread about recent events in online poker anyway. There are a lot of other threads with your "things are getting worse" obsession or JTT's "America is very very very bad" obsession.

That's the JTT Effect Robert. He can turn a harmless birthday thread dedicated to the most congenial and loved member of a2k and turn it into a toxic I-Revile-Everything-That's-US thread.

Could you please stay on topic, Tsars?



Would that be you or Setanta?

04.21.11
Odds aren’t looking good for online poker players
By Michael Vasquez
[email protected]

Playing Internet poker is supposed to be a gamble, but not like this.

After federal prosecutors late last week shut down the country’s three most popular online poker websites, millions of players wondered if the money stored in their online accounts — in some cases tens of thousands of dollars or more — would ever be seen again. The web domain names for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker are now seized and frozen by the U.S. government.

Authorities have taken control of more than 75 company bank accounts in 14 countries, and are seeking $3 billion in fines and restitution. Frozen player accounts alone amount to billions of dollars — money that for the past few days has been in legal limbo.

The good news: the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday announced a deal with two of the affected sites that eased players’ concerns somewhat — PokerStars and Full Tilt would be allowed to resume operations, but only to refund player accounts. And the U.S. Attorney’s office said it would be willing to strike a similar arrangement with the third affected website. It may be weeks or longer, though, before players have their money in hand.

In poker circles, last week’s federal raid has come to be known as “Black Friday.”

“Literally within hours, an entire multi-billion-dollar industry was brought to its knees,” said Scott Long, publisher of the Florida-based Ante Up magazine. The three sites that were busted represented an estimated 70 percent of the U.S. online poker market.

For those still determined to play online, there are more than a dozen smaller poker websites — based overseas — that even today are accepting U.S. player deposits and wagers, despite the recent sting, and despite a 2006 federal law that placed poker sites on shaky legal ground in the first place. But players who use those sites risk another government shutdown that might make it difficult to collect their winnings.

Site operators themselves are at serious risk of going to jail. A total of 11 online gambling executives have been charged with crimes that include bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses. If convicted, each potentially faces decades behind bars.

Federal law doesn’t ban the actual act of playing poker for money online, but it prohibits the online banking transactions that make such poker games possible. Still, it wasn’t until now that federal authorities actually used these restrictions to close site operators down.

Prosecutors say the three sites in question formed fake online businesses pretending to sell items such as jewelry and golf balls — essentially a money-laundering front for the real poker business. To get some banks to look the other way, site operators effectively bribed them, prosecutors allege.

Though casinos might see an immediate uptick in players at “real” poker tables, the relationship between the two forms of poker is generally complementary, not competitive. Online poker, for example, offers penny-ante games that casinos would never bother with — games that provide novice players a place to get their feet wet before visiting an actual casino.

Should the online-fueled pipeline of new players dry up, casinos might find their poker rooms shrinking in future years.

Right away, negative impacts are being felt in other parts of the poker universe. The online piece of the game raked in an estimated $13 billion or so annually — enough money to prop up poker magazines with reams of full-page glossy ads. Professional poker players often struck lucrative sponsorship deals with the big three websites — players would show up to games wearing website-emblazoned T-shirts and hats. That business model, for now, is dead.

Television networks, which played a huge role in boosting poker’s popularity in recent years, are backing away, with Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN sports network announcing this week it would no longer air poker advertising — and some entire poker shows — that are connected to the now-indicted companies.

“There’s just a big degree of uncertainty,” said North Miami Beach poker pro Steve Karp.

Karp, who primarily plays in live casino games, said he was lucky to have only $38 stashed in his online poker account before it was frozen. Karp said some of his poker-playing friends had as much as $150,000 in online accounts that couldn’t be accessed.

But online poker’s loss could be the state budget’s gain. The new poker landscape may boost the prospects of a proposed state law to establish an online poker portal exclusively for Florida players.

Earlier this month, the idea appeared headed nowhere in the Legislature: the Florida Sheriff’s Association likened online poker’s addictiveness to “Internet crack” and players themselves were unenthused about the prospect of playing only against in-state competition. Sites like Pokerstars offered a far-deeper global pool of players and therefore more variety in stakes and game format.

But with Pokerstars and the other big dogs of Internet poker now closed for U.S. business indefinitely, state Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, the Wellington Democrat sponsoring the Florida poker bill in the House, says the idea of an in-state network deserves a second look.

Abruzzo said previous estimates that his bill would create tax revenues of $58 million annually now have to be revised upward since Florida’s online poker room would be “the only legal game in town.” Given Florida’s roughly one million online players, annual taxes in the hundreds of millions are possible, Abruzzo said.

“We could have online poker up and ready in a matter of months,” Abruzzo said. “Gaming is a state right, we would not run into any trouble with the federal government.”

Congress has considered revising the online poker rules it created in 2006, but so far has taken no action. That 2006 law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, created a legal cloud over playing poker online by making it illegal for banks to process Internet gambling transactions. But states can pass their own online poker laws.

Other states besides Florida, such as New Jersey, have also considered creating in-state online poker hubs, and the District of Columbia has in fact approved such a network for D.C. residents and visitors.

Mike Glasser, a 39-year old online poker pro who lives in Boca Raton, said the smaller pool of players in a state system would surely make games less profitable. But even if a state system happened, it’d be months away, so Glasser’s most pressing concern is where to find a new source of income.

Six years ago, burnt out from years of work as a criminal defense attorney, Glasser began playing poker online full-time — and has been making comparable money at it. On the web, players boost their profits by playing multiple games at once, so Glasser said he can’t replicate his routine by driving to a local casino. Meanwhile, Glasser’s wife just found out she’s being laid off from her job as a public-school speech therapist.

It might be time to return to practicing law, Glasser speculated. Or maybe teach.

“We certainly rely on my ability to support the family, via the job I chose,” Glasser said.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/21/v-fullstory/2177991/odds-arent-looking-good-for-online.html#ixzz1KB4fuoT7

Why not both an outside US jurisdiction online operation and an outside US jurisdiction bank accounts? US poker players transfer money to a foreign account from which losses are deducted and to which winnings are paid.

I have to think that wiring money to a overseas account with the intent to undertake an act which is illegal by American law is an violation of anti terrorism laws. I will await conformation from a legal eagle.

As I understand it, online gambling itself, is not illegal.

There are many nationals who have bank accounts in other countries. Would the long arm of Uncle Sam be there if you took some money out of your German bank account to gamble in Monte Carlo?

You seem to have been badly infected with Terrorism disease which comes after a bite from government bred propaganda mosquitos.

WIKI indicates otherwise


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling

In any case if moving money to an online gambling account and not the gambling is the crime then moving money to an offshore account with the intent to later move it into an online gambling account would still be moving money to an offshore account with the intent to commit a crime.

While I dont claim to be an expert on this I am aware enough of rampant charge shopping on the part of DA's to have full confidence that they can invent a crime here.

It is like playing McDonald's monopoly online. The computer algorithm is such that no matter how many big mac's you buy and consume for the playing cards when you roll the dice it will NEVER land on the winning square. Were in real life that could never happen. The online casinos were shut down because they were rigged to get you to invest it all you have and in the end lose it all. Then they infect your computer with a virus and some Joe like me is paid to take off the viruses. And how often do I have to I tell people to avoid those types of rip off sites? Plenty...

You are just making this up as you go. Poker isn't a game played against the house, they get their rake regardless of who wins between the players. Furthermore, all players can download extensive hand history and can analyze the data easily to see if the deal isn't random.

The cheating that happens in poker is usually by players, in the form of collusion. There was one case of a player using an insider in a company to cheat by seeing the hole cards but the players noticed that immediately and the company helped them prove it and gave all their money back (a buddy of mine actually did this part, going through each hand the cheater played and deciding who should get what).

That was the only case of cheating that these big companies have ever faced as an internal issue that has become public, and it has nothing at all to do with the current events in poker (it happened a few years ago). Algorithmic cheating by the company would be easy to spot and prove and they are audited by both their internal auditors as well as thousands of players (players commonly accuse the sites of cheating when they get bad beats, but statistically they can and routinely are proven false).

Incidentally, the issue of responsible gambling is one that online poker sites do far better at than the legal brick-and-mortar casinos. They let you lock yourself out, or put spending limits on yourself, and Steve Wynn (of Wynn casinos) said that they do a better job keeping minors out than do the brick-and-mortar casinos, much to his surprise.



From this Forbes article

Correct. Playing poker online is not illegal, what is illegal is for the banks to process online gambling transactions. The activity is not illegal but a critical part to it (how to fund your account) is.

I'm still missing something. It seems that these online poker firms, though they operated abroad, still sought to stay involved in these transfers, which caused them to be in contravention of US law.

But, if the individual players each had foreign bank accounts [would this be a big deal for serious players?] then to my mind there could be no control exerted by US law. What I direct my foreign bank to do surely isn't the business of the US government, is it?

Foreign bank accounts aren't that easy for most Americans to setup, and you can be taxed for merely moving money across borders.

But this is still a grey area if the Americans are in the US, because they'd be using US "wires" and most poker sites will require that your account be registered to a foreign address etc.