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added on 2011-04-27 01:52:21
PokerStars and FullTilt Poker have regained the right to access their domain names after striking an agreement with the US Department of Justice. Unfortunately, the two poker websites will only open for allowing customers to withdraw their money.
On April 15th, PokerStars and FullTilt Poker were charged by the US Attorney's Office of Southern New York of federal money laundering, bank and wire fraud and illegal gambling. The online poker websites were forced to suspend their poker services, losing nearly 35% of their customer bases and switching their online operations to pokerstars.eu and fultiltpoker.co.uk.
The Department of Justice said that the players' funds were not frozen, nor seized during the investigation. Apparently, both websites owe the US players billions of dollars.
“No individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to reimburse any player’s deposited funds. The agreements allow for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to use their domain names to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies. The deposit of funds by U.S. players is expressly prohibited,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release.
Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, which were charged of money laundering and of running illegal gambling activities as well, have been offered the same conditions as PokerStars and FullTilt Poker, but they have not accepted the US Department of Justice's proposition yet.
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