April 15th. Its already a day that most Americans dread because their taxes are due, but now there is a whole new reason for US poker players to not like the date. The US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging eleven executives, including prominent Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker employees, of various illegal gambling and money laundering violations. While people like Ray Bitar and Isai Scheinberg have not been arrested as of right now, the DoJ has stated it is going to work with Interpol and foreign law enforcement to arrest those they have not been able to catch at the moment. In addition to the charges, they have seized the domains of UB, Absolute Poker, Full Tilt, and Pokerstars, approximately 75 bank accounts connected to the sites and their payment processors, and have made a couple of arrests so far against those defendants currently in the US.
As always, the defendants are innocent until proven guilty, the Southern District of New York division of the Department of Justice is known for building rock-solid cases, so if there is an indictment from them its reasonable to assume they have done their homework. There is some speculation that this indictment stems from a similar case involving Daniel Tzvetkoff which broke through last year. None of this can currently be confirmed, but the odd nature regarding his sudden granting of bail and meetings with prosecutors does suggest he may have had something to do with the final pieces of the puzzle to get the big fish.
The media, both within the poker realm and outside of it, have ran stories on the subject. While they are currently all operating on the same information, more details are slowly emerging as some analysis of the indictment is done. The endgame if the feds get everything they want? A $3 billion forfeiture of funds from the three sites, and while a specific breakdown of who pays what is not given, it sends a pretty clear signal, the DoJ views these businesses as illegal operations and they want to make the sites pay for what they\’ve done.
At the moment, none of the sites have released any statements, but some have taken action. Pokerstars has restricted both deposits and cash game play for US-based players, currently without any explanation. Meanwhile, cash on Full Tilt and UB is still available. The PPA has, however released a statement, which we have in an accompanying article here on this site.
The situation is very fluid, given the reactions and the DoJ notices take time to propagate on the internet, but its safe to say this is the biggest thing to happen to online poker in a very long time, and at least in the short term it looks like one of the worst.