Stars/FTP/UB/AP shut down for US players

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Well i agree it is not a bad thing for MTT grinders its shocking for me! No way will i get my volume now to reach supernova playing sng's. On the plus side i could just get my coach to work with me non stop on MTT's well he is not playing and play everything up to 215's as they are hell soft now.
 

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Also I think I know why some of these skins are banned in Australia. It's because sites like boyle poker and paddy's are connected to a sports-book and allow in game sports betting (which is illegal in Australia, via the internet that is).
 
Here's my take

FTP/PS/AP are really screwed. The charges are serious and it's obvious the intent is to completely destroy to make room for Harrahs and MGM etc to move into the market if/when legislation passes

As a result of this they'll move into euro markets and will most likely change their standard currency from USD. this is bad for us as euro timezones are terrible for Australians

The questions over US Players and their money is a big one. This could rather be sorted in a matter of weeks or years

It's also clear FTP has been knowledgable to this and has lied to it it's players. With the recent withdrawal problems and cash grab promotions FTP hav been trying to suck the players dry.

The player pool will soften. The 'good players will find a way but the bad players won't theory has already been in practice since the last 5 years. Rec US players haven't been able to deposit via cc for years. It's going to be extremely hard for even the most dedicated Us players to play outside of moving countries
 
Have the American government gone on an internet crackdown frenzy of late? First they went after the web sports streaming sites and now they have gone after the poker sites.

I know that America can only control sites hosted in their own country, but alot of these kinds of "dodgy" sites are hosted there, which affects the rest of the world.

Are the Americans imposing their own kind of internet censorship on the world under the guise of cracking down on crime?
 
Knowledge said:
Also I think I know why some of these skins are banned in Australia. It's because sites like boyle poker and paddy's are connected to a sports-book and allow in game sports betting (which is illegal in Australia, via the internet that is).
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William Hill and others with ingame internet betting allow Aussies to join though.
 
Borgsta said:
William Hill and others with ingame internet betting allow Aussies to join though.
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Strange it was just an idea as I know that is why we cant play on Ladbrokes. Maybe it has something to dow ith them having offices in Australia? I know that is the resason we cant play on beftair poker IIRC, i'm not sure these are all just ideas/theorys.
 
missed this thread lsat night when i was looking at this forum.

massive news.

would it not be so much easier for US government to legislate, regulate and tax.... their making money and everyone is happy then no??

the internet is not quite as free as we'd all like to believe it is really though.

how does this personally effect guys like ivey and lederer who are part owners of full tilt??
 

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sante said:
So in short, should we be withdrawing our money? Or does this just make it easier to win cash without the American's?

It could be months/years before we know what the outcome is for Pokerstars/Full Tilt etc...
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Wouldn't be panicking just yet. Probably smart to leave just enough online to be able to play your preferred game and not a cent more. I don't have alot on line these days but if i bink something will ba cashing out straight away.

Logic dictates that the games should get a fair bit softer with the withdrawal of Americans. The fact that it was so tough for them to deposit/withdraw meant that their were few fish amongst them. Now that they are gone, there will be the same amount of fish, but less sharks taking their money. It also wouldn't be hard to fathom some casual players from outside the US coming back to the tables with the hopes of less good players taking there money. Although the uncertainty of the community at the moment will probably negate this.

Seems the other sites are striking while the iron is hot. After the news yesterday received reload bonuses from 888 and Party, where as i can't recall seeing one from the for ages.
 
ok as an outsider, can someone explain in simple terms whats going on. or are the details still unclear. So there is fraudulent activity, what exactly has been done or accused of being done?

Even post me a link of a good simple explaination.

Cheers.
 
I played majors today and it was so sick soft I nearly wanted to cry at how good it was. I doubt we'll be playing with American's ever again. Stars had like 300k people online at like 5am and FTP had 100-120 or something. I read that 25% of stars' player pool was Americans and something like 40% for FTP, so obviously FTP has been affected more.

The US-Government will set up their own sites, and tax/rake the s**t out of them and obviously they won't invite foreigners to the party.

I think funds will be fine, I know stars keeps all players funds in the Royal Bank of Scotland and it wasn't on the indictment list. FTP is one I'd be a little bit worried about and I won't be keeping to much on there, they are a horribly run business and they do shady s**t all the time so who knows whats going on there. I think the reason though that non-us players are having trouble cashing out at the moment is because of the high number of cashouts the sites are having to process. Standard run to the bank type scenario. I think everything will be fine in 1-2 weeks.

I am slightly worried though because if you read the DoJ indictment the sites have clearly committed fraudulent activities in America in order to get around the UIGEA. So it will be interesting to see how hard the DoJ will swing the ban-hammer and how heavily these sites will be affected. Like I said I can't really see Stars going under however FTP might be another story. I've got a couple red pro friends and one of them had been hanging out with a higher up red pro at FTP (an American pro) over the weekend and said this particular pro had lost 50mil in FTP equity lawl, might get arrested on top of that aswell!

Also like Mitchemx said, check the euro sites, they have some juicy reload bonuses atm! 888poker is running double guarantees aswell.
 
You would think that obviously Stars/Tilt had legal advice that the way they were channelling money was not against the law...

So it will be interesting to see how this plays out... part of me thinks it will end with legalised gambiling with the US getting their fair share of the turnover that these sites amass...
 
I spoke to Jono about the article and he said he was severely mis quoted and he had no idea about the tone/nature of the article.

In other news here is an interesting article posted on 2p2:

Recognized gambling law authority and professor I. Nelson Rose, who teaches gambling and the law at Whittier Law School in California, has put out a very interesting blog post concerning the "Black Friday" indictments

www.gamblingandthelaw.com

GAMBLING AND THE LAW®
Federal Poker Indictments: Revisiting Prohibition

The timing is suspicious.

March saw Nevada regulators approving a partnership between Caesars and 888, and Wynn announcing a joint venture with PokerStars. Now comes the indictments, three-billion-dollar civil suit and seizures of domain names by the feds. Wynn immediately cancelled his plans. Players were panicked.

Which was, of course, the goal.

If the allegations are true, the operators brought this on themselves, by lying and bribing bank officials. Of course, the prosecutors have the problem of convincing a jury that there is bank fraud when the "victims" are tricked into making millions of dollars.

And will this be the end of Internet poker? Did Prohibition end drinking?

Prohibition created modern organized crime, by outlawing alcoholic beverages. When people want something and it is illegal, organizations will arise to fill the demand. How much more so when the activity, online poker, is not even clearly illegal?

Every action by the U.S. federal government makes it more difficult for it to go after the next operator. The UIGEA, rammed through by the failed politician Bill Frist (R.-TN), can be seen as an anti-consumer-protection law, because it scared all of the publicly traded gaming companies out of the U.S. market. Then prosecutors went after payment processors, making it more difficult for players to find legitimate ways to send their money to betting sites.

Now the feds have seized .com domain names and charged operators with bank fraud. So, gaming sites are switching to .eu and .uk, and cutting off all physical contact with the U.S. Even the present American operators can’t be extradited, so what hope is there for the DoJ to bring future foreign operators here to stand trial?

The Grand Jury has been meeting for at least a year. The criminal indictment against PokerStars, Full Tilt, Absolute and their founders, was unsealed by the U.S. Attorney for New York on April 15, but bore a date-stamp of March 10. So why now?

Besides the Caesars-888 and Wynn-PokerStars agreements, the Nevada Assembly Judiciary Committee recently approved a bill to regulate online poker. And the District of Columbia actually made it legal.

The DoJ has been waging a war of intimidation against Internet gambling for years, successfully scaring players, operators, payment processors and affiliates into abandoning the American market. Lacking the two essentials to any prosecution – a statute that clearly makes the activity illegal and a defendant physically present in the U.S. – the feds have announced showy legal action against easy targets about every other year.

Online poker is not an easy target, since a federal Court of Appeal ruled the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events. And tricking financial institutions into processing poker payments seems a technicality, especially since the banks made millions without paying a penny in fines.

But getting a bank to agree to process gambling transactions in return for a $10 million investment is an easier case, if true. I can understand approaching a small bank – so small that the officer and part-owner who allegedly arranged the deal, asked for, and received, only $20,000 for his “bonus.” But why would you do this in Utah, of all states?

There are lots of interesting nuggets in the legal papers. The DoJ claims that one-third of the billions of dollars players deposited went to the operators through the rake. That number seems high, but if true, it explains why everyone wants to operate an online poker room, with few expenses and no chance of losing to a lucky gambler.

Most of the activities cited occurred after the passage of the UIGEA. This is a subtle acknowledgment that operators who left the U.S. in 2006 have nothing to fear.

Even if there was a bribe, the feds are still going to have to prove that the poker was illegal. Since the Wire Act won’t work, prosecutors used 18 U.S.C. 1955, which makes it a federal felony if five or more people do more than $2,000 in business a day in violation of state gambling laws. The indictment relies on “New York Penal Law 225 and 225.05 and the laws of other states.” There is a “thank you” to the Washington State Gambling Commission, indicating that the DoJ is probably going to piggyback on that state’s 2006 law outlawing all Internet gambling, as well.

The Washington statute was upheld by the State Supreme Court. Still, there are problems. State laws are presumed not to reach beyond their borders. And even if Internet poker is illegal in that state, it is quite a leap to seize domain names for the entire country and threaten bank accounts in places like Panama.

The only state with a law better than Washington’s is Nevada. But basing this attack on Internet poker on Nevada law would look like it was motivated by the land based casinos. After all, who are the big winners here?

We will probably see the first attacks on the indictments from the two defendants who were arrested, the Utah banker and the Nevada payment processor who allegedly bribed him, when they fight extradition to New York. And the poker operators will undoubtedly fight to get their .com names back for the rest of the world.

The operators will never stand trial. The only U.S. extradition treaty I have found that covers illegal gambling is with Hong Kong. Calling it bank fraud won’t work, since the defendants can show their local courts that it is based on gambling. And it is fundamental to all extraditions that the activity be illegal in both countries. No nation will extradite an individual to be tried for the very activity that that nation licenses.

There may not even be a settlement. The DoJ accepted $405 million from PartyGaming and one of its founders and $100 million from Neteller and its founders. But those companies had already left the U.S. gaming markets. The DoJ will insist on a guilty plea to something, which might kill the operators’ chances of getting licensed when American laws change. And no amount of money will buy them the right to open up again without a change in the law. So what would these operators get from a settlement, other than not having to be worried about getting arrested changing planes?

It will be interesting to watch the fallout. There are a lot of famous American poker players and others who are associated with the indicted operators. They should be getting their affairs in order.

Meanwhile, like a raid by Elliot Ness on breweries and speakeasies during Prohibition, there are now wonderful opportunities for new operators to fill the vacuum. Unless, of course, Americans are actually going to stop playing poker on the Internet.

© Copyright 2011, I. Nelson Rose, Encino, California. All rights reserved worldwide. Gambling and the Law® is a registered trademark of Professor I. Nelson Rose, www.GAMBLINGANDTHELAW.com.
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Knowledge said:
Also I think I know why some of these skins are banned in Australia. It's because sites like boyle poker and paddy's are connected to a sports-book and allow in game sports betting (which is illegal in Australia, via the internet that is).
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Poker is also illegal in Australia - at least the provision of it is. Australian companies who provide online poker can be prosecuted, and overseas websites can be subject to mandatory blocking (although the govt haven't figured out how to do that - see the filter trials etc). I don't see how sportsbooks would make any difference. On the other hand, if the companies have any operations in Australia that could be reason enough to ban Australian players.
 
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