Watch the episode below:

The warrant directs the .com registrar (VeriSign) to direct the name servers to the addresses specified in the warrant or such other name servers or IP addresses as directed by the FBI.

These domains have been locked by the registry (and by the registrar in the case of www.ultimatebet.com – this domain remains with GoDaddy pending a final disposition of the domain seizure case in Kentucky) and now cannot be moved without a court order or the consent of the Department of Justice. I understand that the rest of the domains (save and except for www.ultimatebet.com) are registered with foreign registrars.

14 arrested — “at least,” authorities say — presumably to be charged with traffic-ticket offenses. Though you never know with Harris County … they’d be up for Class A capital punishment there, I suspect, if that dang constitution didn’t get in the dern way.

Not clear on what the FBI’s involvement was here. The Feds generally haven’t gotten involved in these sorts of local raids throughout Texas. And in general this raid seems a bit peculiar as there supposedly hasn’t been any sort of crackdown for a few years, a Houston player tells us.

Some basic info about what was known as the I-45 South game:

It’s a very large game that’s been running for many years. They have $2,000 freerolls every night. Games running from 1/3 NL up to 5/10 on a regular basis.

Also a bit odd/lame … commentors in this news report seem intent on naming names and tattling on other games that may or may not be involved in the Houston poker underground but have yet to be raided. Cool raw video footage though, if you want a closer glimpse of handcuffed players.

Prosecutors protested his release, claiming he was a flight risk as a foreign national who is believed to have a $100 million hidden stash at his disposal.

But the judge accepted the assurance of his father, Kim Tzvetkoff, who was willing to put up his own $1.2 million home in Brisbane, Australia, up as collateral should Daniel fail to appear in New York’s Southern District federal court. The potential release was a surprise even to his family — and presumably a relief to any online poker big-wigs who fear they might face a similar challenge somewhere down the line.

Click here for a video interview with his father.

However, Tzvetkoff will likely spend at least a few more days in the North Las Vegas Detention Center as his lawyers fight a separate detention order from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security.

Should he clear immigration, his father has agreed under court order to drive him across the country to New York, where he will be met by his pregnant fiance and 3-year-old son to live under house arrest while awaiting trial.

Tzvetkoff was in Las Vegas, btw, for a conference (still trying to figure out which one), and was staying at the Encore. Police arrested him there after someone — supposedly one of his creditors — tipped off the FBI about his presence.

Kinda funny in a Vegas way … he had to share a bench during the bail hearing with a woman charged with prostitution.

Dude … it’s gettin’ hot here in the US … specifically in Las Vegas.

Yesterday federal authorities arrested Daniel Tzvetkoff, a 27-year-old Australian national “on charges that he assisted illegal internet gambling companies by processing approximately $500 million in transactions between U.S. gamblers and internet gambling websites and disguising the transactions to the banks so that they would appear unrelated to gambling,” according to a statement from the DOJ’s Southern District of New York.

Illegal internet gambling companies? Yikes …

Tzvetkoff, as founder of Intabill and ACH System, faces up to 75 years in prison for bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to operate and finance an illegal gambling business, and … get this … for processing fund transfers in violation of the UIGEA.

I’m pretty sure that’s the first ever indictment to bring up UIGEA charges.

About a year ago the Australia Courier-Mail reported that Tzvetkoff owed Full Tilt, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Absolute Poker more than $30 million as the overextended, ostentatious Gen-Y tycoon’s personal empire was crumbling. Then, Full Tilt (through Kolyma Corporation) sued Tzvetkoff in Australian Court, saying his company Intabill owed them $52 million.

Before his arrest, he was saying Full Tilt tricked him into a bad deal and his lawyer doublecrossed him. He blamed the economy for a multi-multi-millionaire having to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. More on the pre-arrest rise and fall of an online poker payment processor here.

I mean for chrissakes, he drove a Lamborghini with the license plate “BALLER”! And when a bank repossessed a competitive race car of his, they got everything except its $100k engine, which had been stripped out and hidden.

Click below for the official word from the DOJ:

United States Attorney Southern District of New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 16, 2010

AUSTRALIAN MAN CHARGED IN MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT
WITH LAUNDERING HALF BILLION DOLLARS
IN INTERNET GAMBLING PROCEEDS

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, JOSEPH DEMAREST, JR., the
Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and JAMES T. HAYES, JR.,
the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Department of Homeland
Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(“ICE”), announced that Australian national DANIEL TZVETKOFF was
arrested in Las Vegas this morning on charges that he assisted
illegal internet gambling companies by processing approximately
$500 million in transactions between U.S. gamblers and internet
gambling websites and disguising the transactions to the banks so
that they would appear unrelated to gambling.

According to an Indictment unsealed this morning in
Manhattan federal court:

In early 2008, TZVETKOFF began processing gambling
transactions in the United States through the Automated Clearing
House system (“ACH system”) which allows money to be
electronically transferred from a gambler’s U.S. checking account
to an internet gambling company simply by the gambler going to
the internet gambling company’s website and entering his bank
account information. TZVETKOFF and his co-conspirators processed
more than $543 million in ACH transactions between February 2008
and March 2009, the overwhelming majority of which were on behalf
of internet gambling companies. TZVETKOFF then arranged for the
funds received from gamblers to be wired offshore for the benefit
of the gambling companies. TZVETKOFF also invested approximately
$27 million from these ACH transactions into an online “payday
loan” company that offered consumers high-interest, short term
loans that typically carried an annualized interest rate of more
than 500 percent.

TZVETKOFF and his co-conspirators induced U.S. banks to
provide ACH services to internet gambling companies by disguising
the transactions so that they would not appear to be gambling
related. To accomplish this, TZVETKOFF and his co-conspirators
created dozens of shell companies with names unrelated to
gambling — complete with phony web sites that made the companies
seem legitimate — and represented to banks that the ACH
transactions were on behalf of these companies. On May 3, 2008,
one of TZVETKOFF’s co-conspirators in an email told TZVETKOFF
that he had hired programmers to develop “unique” websites for
the shell companies so that if someone was “checking the
companies out there is absolutely no way to tie the companies
together.” TZVETKOFF responded: “This is all perfect!”

In March 2009, TZVETKOFF stopped processing internet
gambling transactions after leading internet gambling websites
accused him of stealing approximately $100 million from them.

The Indictment charges TZVETKOFF with four counts,
including bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to operate
and finance an illegal gambling business and to process
electronic funds transfers in violation of the Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. If convicted of all counts,
TZVETKOFF faces a maximum sentence of 75 years in prison.
TZVETKOFF, 27, was arrested this morning in Las Vegas
and is expected to be presented in Las Vegas federal court later
today. This case has been assigned to United States District
Judge LEWIS A. KAPLAN.

Mr. BHARARA praised the investigative work of the FBI
and ICE for their assistance in the investigation. Mr. BHARARA
said that the investigation is continuing.

Assistant United States Attorneys ARLO DEVLIN-BROWN,
JONATHAN NEW, and MICHAEL LOCKARD are in charge of the
prosecution. This case is being handled by the Office’s
Organized Crime Unit.

The charges contained in the Indictment are merely
accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and
until proven guilty.

10-130
###
-2

[via justice.gov]

Attorneys on both sides aren’t saying anything right now, but expect more news to come out when an announcement of possible indictments in the near future.

Breaking News! A grand jury has just indicted an online gambling payment processor! Plus, a New Jersey Senator rolls out new poker legislation, and affiliate programs change their Terms & Conditions!

Documents obtained by the AP show that a judge in the district issued a seizure warrant last week for an account at a Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco, and that a federal prosecutor told a bank in Arizona to freeze an account.

In a letter dated Friday and faxed to Alliance Bank of Arizona, the prosecutor said that accounts held by payment processor Allied Systems Inc. are subject to seizure and forfeiture “because they constitute property involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses.” The letter was signed by Arlo Devlin-Brown, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

In another letter faxed the same day, Devlin-Brown asks that the bank treat the funds “as legally seized” by the FBI, saying that the government has probable cause that the gambling payments of U.S. residents had been directed to offshore illegal Internet gambling businesses.

Meanwhile, the British press is reporting:

America might be about to loosen its gambling corsets

These two stories aren’t as mutually exclusive as they might seem. Often, when times are changing, old holdovers from a previous philosophical era will turn uber-aggressive with their means and methods trying to give their way one last shot, and at a minimum hoping to take a few folks down with them as their kind are pushed out.

That’s certainly plausible considering how emphatic bureaucrats in the DOJ have been about the illegality of online poker/gambling even when the people and courts have repeatedly disagreed.

Developing …

We’ll hold off on saying too much until we get more solid information, but basically, checks from PokerStars are “bouncing”, particularly with New York banks. Instant E-checks seems to be the payment processor most notably affected at present. However, it’s not just e-checks … paper checks are proving uncashable, too. Reliable sources tell us that this is not just a little snafu, but that it’s the direct result of DOJ enforcement actions somehow connected to the Federal Court in New York’s Southern District.

This is the same court, of course, that handled Neteller way back when, and more recently came to non-prosecution agreements guilty plea settlements with Anurag Dikshit et al. While the Party Poker dudes are officially in the clear,* is it possible the Feds are now saying, hey, that was fun, and we got a lot of money … let’s try it again with those PokerStars guys!?!

The FBI offers more clarity on who’s agreed to what between Party Poker peeps and the Feds here.

The best I can tell, right now Stars seems to be the target. No confirmation on the fates of Full Tilt and UB payment processing.

UPDATE: Problems at Full Tilt, too. (Thanks, Ken, for the info/link!) And Ultimate Bet.

Regardless, whatever shakes down (pun intended), it raises a lot of questions at an interesting time, considering how much big money gets transfered passed between poker players — particularly in the summer — often on an online site in exchange for casino chips and/or bricks of cash.

Might the value of the Euro have just gone up, at least in the poker economy? Seems plausible if they’re the only ones able to convert online bankrolls into real American WSOP buy-in dollars.

* Cases against (with?) two other Party principals, Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon, are still pending in the same court.

In this week’s episode:

What are the SSIGI and HR 5767?
It’s Bob Goodlatte’s Worst Nightmare…
Barney Frank and Ron Paul have introduced HR 5767 to target the financial powers of the UIGEA, and they are receiving the backing of several prominent groups including the SSIGI… or the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative.

ePassporte Pushed Out of Industry…
Another one bites the dust…
Last Friday ePassporte abruptly abandoned their US Customers with little explanation. This week we learn that the US Attorney’s Office in New York has been putting the screws to them. Imagine that!

Legal Online Gambling in the US?
It’s no lie…
American citizens can use credit cards and ban accounts to fund their online gambling activities at this site that the US Government not only knows about, but actually encourages you to play at!

In this week’s episode:

There’s No Cheating in Online Poker!
Now that we have your attention…
We thought that we should let ya know that some companies are boldly selling poker bot software for under $200, claiming big returns on your investment! Good luck with that! =0)

Our Tribute to the FBI…
We just LOVE the FBI…
I mean, why wouldn’t we love the FBI? They give us so much free comedy material that we would otherwise have to write for ourselves! God bless those brave men and women fighting the tyranny of online gambling!

Washington State to be a Battleground… Again…
The War Rages on…
First, it was J Todd battling the State Gambling Commission over his websites in 2006. Then our friend Nick Jenkins was actually arrested and charged with online gambling in 2007. Now, in early 2008, Attorney and poker player Lee Rousso is challenging the State’s online gambling ban in court!