Poker Black Friday - What happened and why
- Filed under: High Stakes News
- Date: Apr 18,2011
Poker Black Friday, what it is and what happens in the future? The FBI has seized the action of the largest US-friendly online poker sites. They’re charging the founders of Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars and Cereus Network (UB.com and Absolute Poker) of bank fraud, money laundering, violation of the UIGEA and operating illegal gambling.
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FBI has frozen 75 bank accounts and five internet domains connected to the three big poker sites.
According to the press release from the FBI, eleven defendants have been named: Isai Scheinberg and Paul Tate (representing PokerStars), Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick (Full Tilt Poker), and Scott Tom and Brent Beckley (Absolute Poker). Ryan Lang, Ira Rubin, Bradley Franzen, and Chad Elie are alleged to have ran various payment processors, while the 11th defendant is SunFirst Bank owner John Campos.
The named defendants are facing up to 35 years in prison and damage claims of at least 3 billion dollars. Some have already been arrested, while some are being sought internationally.
FBI, Full Tilt Poker and 2010
Looks like Full Tilt Poker was already being investigated by FBI just before UIGEA came into force in June 2010. FBI interviewed some online players of FTP and also visited small stakes players without warning.
It was Daniel Tzvetkoff whom FBI was interested in. He is the inventor of the transaction schemes of FTP, PokerStars and Absolute Poker.
What has happened since “Black Friday”
Full Tilt Poker has cancelled the Onyx Cup and ESPN cancelled some of their very popular poker shows. The Onyx Cup was to be a series of 6 live events with buy-ins from $100k to $300k.
PokerStars’ sponsored North American Poker Tour will most likely be cancelled as well, as ESPN, broadcasters of the NAPT, have taken down Inside Deal from their website.
It might be that Poker After After Dark and High Stakes Poker will be cancelled in mid-season as well.
SCOOP and FTOPS XX prize pools have been lowered already.
The fields of World Series of Poker will go down as well. Huge load of satellites to WSOP events were played at the three major sites which are now banned for US players.
The cost of “Black Friday”
There’s new documents coming out daily. The US Government have released a civil complaint against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus Network demanding a $3 billion in compensation.
You can read the complaint here.
The US Department of Justice are seeking damages from the three online poker sites for the following sums:
PokerStars $1,5 billion
Full Tilt Poker $1 billion
Cereus Network (UB/AP) $500 million
The US Government are also seeking prison sentences ranging from 5 to 35 years for the eleven individual defendants.
All poker sites have their new domains up and running already: FullTiltPoker.co.uk, PokerStars.eu, UBPoker.eu and AbsolutePoker.eu.
Source: PokerBlackFriday.com
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