[b]In an apparent crackdown on Internet gambling, federal authorities in New York have frozen or seized bank accounts worth $34 million belonging to 27,000 online poker players, according to representatives for the players and account holders.[/b]
In an operation that began last week, the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York froze or issued seizure orders for bank accounts in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Arizona held at Wells Fargo, Citibank, Goldwater Bank and Alliance Bank of Arizona.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office had no comment.
The accounts are managed by Allied Systems Inc., and Account Services, which handle cash for popular online poker sites, including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. Though the money belongs to the poker players, it is held for them in accounts managed by the two service companies.
Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn’t accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out, said lawyer for the company, Jeff Ifrah. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won’t be able to cash them, he said.
Well, I guess it’s good to see that there aren’t worse crimes occurring that they could be spending their time preventing. Any poker players here get their bank accounts seized?
Fuck those Fuckers. I got my $600 out of Party Poker before they shut down service to the U.S. I still have about $125 at PokerStars, but I rarely play. I don’t care so much about the money, just the cock-sucking legislators.
This is ludicrous! When you have bankers and stockbrokers playing the system and skirting the lines around the rules and doing illegal things… what happens? Nothing… (some even got taxpayer money to make up for their mistakes) it wasn’t their money… it was ours they were gambling with.
But, when you have a small amount of people spending and winning/losing their money online effecting nobody else, you seize everything and shut it down?
Hey, I left out the setup for a conservative to agree with a gay Massachusetts liberal to keep the government out of our computer gaming. Not my fault nobody tried to talk about the alleged subject.
