The Associated Press is at least paying attention to the developments reported here on Pokerati in what is sure to be a complex legal situation — one that already is bringing up not just legally questionable issues of non-brick-and-mortar gambling, but also money laundering. They also clear up some of the details about who got tagged and how:
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.