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Written by Pino | Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Online poker players and their chosen payment processors in mid-transaction were attacked in Washingon State recently as more than $8 million was seized. Both deposits and winning payments at multiple online poker clubs were seized one by one as all funds were frozen with little hope of these players ever seeing their money again. While this is an attack against online poker in general, it’s the players, not the online poker rooms who are taking the hit. And then the payment processors are actually the ones that end up paying large fines and possibly even jail time if they are found guilty of any illegal transactions.
Targeted processors in Washington State included Etegrity Processing, Arrow Checks, Secure Money, Anaya Trading Solutions, and Blue Lake Capital Management. The confiscations all started back in 2009 when an investigative task force partnered up with Washington State Gambling Commission. Frozen money is currently being held in some of the biggest banks in the country including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase & Co, as well as others. Involved poker rooms included Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, UB.com, and Absolute Poker, all of which are among the biggest poker rooms online.
Online poker players in Washington State who were intimidated by Federal investigators actually admitted to receiving checks from payment processor Arrow Checks for online poker winnings, giving the Feds the proof they needed to incriminate the payment processors.
While most states in the US have not attacked the online poker issue, Washington has been the worst to target online poker thus far. Only time will tell what will become of the proposed legislature that goes round and round in Congress. Perhaps the newly elected Congress will make some progress towards regulation in the new year.
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Written by Pino · Filed Under news · |
