US online poker players, the federal government has a message for you: it wants to help you get your money back.
Last week, the FBI and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York seized the domain names of the three largest Internet poker operations in the US market: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker. In addition to replacing the sites with a scary-looking FBI warning image, the government went after several US-based payment processors and also obtained a restraining order against bank accounts used by the poker companies. As a result, all of the money deposited by US players with the offshore poker companies suddenly became much harder to access.
That money is not necessarily lost. The government today announced an agreement with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker under which it will return their domain names temporarily—so long as they agree not to allow US-based IP addresses to gamble for real money, and so long as they don't allow any further US-based deposits. The move was made to make it easy for US players to withdraw their deposited cash.
“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,” said US Attorney Preet Bharara. "In fact, this Office expects the companies to return the money the US players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players, as today's agreements with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker demonstrate."
Absolute Poker can sign on to the same deal if it wishes.
The sites are free to continue offering real gambling services in other countries, but the US government has cracked down on their US operations, which it says have earned a combined $3 billion in total revenue over the years.
Committed players won't be deterred from gambling, of course. One player described his own plan two days ago on a poker forum:
I am a US player and I have a plan that I am looking into and would like to know if anyone else has looked into it. I just emailed FTP [Full Tilt Poker] support to ask if it would be alright to change my address to a non-US address, use a VPN to change my IP to outside the US, and change my bank account to a non-US account. I asked them if they would consider it to be a violation of their Terms of Service. Also, I asked if they would consider me a non-US player… If they say OK, then I am going to get it set up but to be safe, I am not going to play until I hear about many successful cashouts to non-US players over the course of the next week or two.
Also, I have heard that a couple of Latvian bank accounts are good, safe, and easy to open same with HSBC, RBS, etc. Until I get a foreign bank account set up, I will use friends and GB (please PM me for more info) to cashout. GB said he is stopping wires to the US for now but he can still mail checks.
Sounds like a lot of work—which is exactly how the government wants it.
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