New York - The U.S. Justice Department has reached an
agreement with two of the online gambling companies whose domains it seized
last week, which will allow U.S. customers to withdraw their funds and foreign
bettors to continue gambling on the sites. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker
entered into agreements with the Justice Dept.; the same deal has also been
offered to Absolute Poker.
The sites face numerous charges over allegations they used payment processors who masked gambling funds as flowers and other items, to circumvent a U.S. law forbidding banks from processing online gambling transactions.
Eleven individuals have also been charged in connection with the domain seizures.
“No individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained, and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to reimburse any player’s deposited funds,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
“In fact, this office expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players.”
http://tinyurl.com/3ccvohf
(Bloomberg)
http://tinyurl.com/3jnfjs7 (Reuters)
http://tinyurl.com/3ddqh64 (DMW previous coverage)
Comments are closed