Pokerstars is an online poker site. Pokerstrategy is an educational training site. They are not the same site. The TSL3 is sponsored by pokerstrategy.com.
Also Pokerstars are not 'US', they are from Isle of Man. Most likely they will continue to operate. But with 50% less fish games will be tough as hell if they don't lower the rake.
games would be easier. fish:good player ratio of us players turned for the worse after it became a pain in the arse to deposit
I just re-installed pokerstars to see if I could get my money out and IT WORKED. I logged into my account and cashier and got a check sent to my home just in case. I hope this works... Fuckin bullshit.
On April 16 2011 05:56 laegoose wrote:Also Pokerstars are not 'US', they are from Isle of Man. Most likely they will continue to operate. But with 50% less fish games will be tough as hell if they don't lower the rake.
PartyPoker withdrew from the US years ago and the games are just fine, probably even better if there's an impact on other sites.
But the authorities are having all this trouble to only suspend transactions, I serious doubt they would be able to cease all play unless they force the ISPs to IP block, but then there's all the bad press and comparisons with China.
On April 16 2011 06:02 thekoven wrote: I just re-installed pokerstars to see if I could get my money out and IT WORKED. I logged into my account and cashier and got a check sent to my home just in case. I hope this works... Fuckin bullshit.
That check probably wont check since the accounts are frozen and can't have money moved in our out, like everyone else stated in this thread. Unless you got super lucky and it was cashed by an account that wasn't siezed, which is very unlikely.
On April 16 2011 06:03 MaGic~PhiL wrote: crazy shit people are shit
getting 150.000 $ a day and still wanting more
fucking asshole T_T
I really doubt that story is the whole case or even 1/10th of it. Something like this doesn't go down after one meeting with someone, even as important as this guy may have been. The government has probably been getting the evidence on this for quite possibly years.
20 years in prison; fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered; 3 years supervised release; forfeiture of proceeds of offense
Is that who's getting charged and what they can get?
There's a link to the Department of Justice pdf of the filing in the OP. It details the charges.
Oh, sorry, not really in the mood for reading legal stuff in .pdf format right now
On April 16 2011 04:24 Propane wrote: If the United States were acting rationally they would simply tax cocaine at a reasonable rate and allow drug addicts to continue doing what they enjoy. If you live in the United States or any other jurisdiction which is attempting to ban cocaine please contact your representative and let them know that you are in favor of allowing people to do drugs.
By outlawing cocaine the United States is wasting resources enforcing a silly law when they could instead allow a business to thrive and produce entertainment for millions of people.
Additionally, allowing companies to operate inside the USA would allow better consumer protection.
See now how bad your argument sounds?
His argument doesn't sound bad at all. It's true that the drug war is an enormous money sink that does not yield benefits. Drug legalization would in all likelihood significantly reduce our drug problem in many ways, including reduced crime, extra revenue, and greater consumer safety.
The government should not be so heavy handed in what they let a person do, so long as it does not harm anyone else. What a person does with their money and their body is up to them.
The USA allows lotteries, which is just large-scale distributed gambling. Stocks, housing investments, these are all legal forms of gambling. Why are they trying so hard to make poker illegal?
simple as hell to understand WHY. look at vegas.
Vegas is probably the most controlled, highly regulated areas anywhere in the world, despite the facade of entertainment they try to present. and it wasn't always that way.
bottom line is this. You can run almost any kind of business you want - as long as the government knows about it, and if you're dealing with enormous sums of money - you're paying your taxes, properly reporting your income, you're acquiring all the proper licenses for what you're doing - the government is completely kosher with it.
All they care really is, they get a piece of your pie. When you cut uncle sam out of the equation, he's out to get you. Now apply this understanding to what's been happening with online poker. Seriously you're a smart guy. You're not obtuse by nature. You knew within yourself, that gambling is shady business itself, but you got blindsided by all these online poker sites popping up, and since you see the adverts everywhere, you assume it must all be totally legal and kosher.
Not to mention the huge fad around televised poker with all these personalities who make the scene look so cool and interesting. Especially that actress(can't remember her name), who caused quite a splash with her general appearance and her unique strategy(you know who i'm talking about).
Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry
The internet is still coming to grips with the huge online gambling bust that just took down the U.S.'s three biggest online poker sites.
But Australia's Courier-Mail already has the scoop on the one man who may have single-handedly built the online industry ... then handed it to the U.S. government on a platter.
According to this story, Daniel Tzvetkoff was a young Australian entrepreneur who set up the payment processing schemes used by the biggest poker sites to handle their (mostly illegal) transactions.
He made Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars millions of dollars — and making as much $150,000 a day for himself — but then got even more greedy and started taking them for himself. They sued him, demanding more than $100 million of their own money back.
Then last April, Tzvetkoff was arrested in Las Vegas and charged with the same crimes those sites founders were charged with today: money laundering, bank fraud, wire fraud. As an Australian citizen with a lot of wealth, he was considered a flight risk and denied bail.
Then after a "secret" meeting with prosecutors, he was suddenly out on bail. And now, his former colleagues are the ones facing serious jail time.
Daniel Tzvetkoff knows the operations of these poker site inside and out. He's the one man positioned to give these companies to the U.S. Attorneys on a silver platter. And it looks like that's exactly what he did, cooperating with the authorities to avoid his own lengthy jail sentence.
All the major gambling prosecutions in the U.S., since Tzvetkoff's arrest have been run out of the office of Arlo Devlin-Brown, the Manhattan Asst. U.S. Attorney, who is Tzvetkoff's "handler."
According to a source, "He knows how to reverse-engineer transactions to determine its original source," making him very valuable to investigators.
And the biggest irony of all? It's been rumored that the only reason the FBI got their hands on him is because Full Tilt or Poker Stars (the companies he used to work for and stole from) tipped off the FBI that he was going to be traveling to the United States
They ratted him out ... and he turned the tables. No honor among thieves.
And as the Courier Mail put it, if this were still the old days, he'd buried in the Las Vegas desert right now.
On April 16 2011 05:49 SpiffD wrote: Could someone please answer my dumb question, please If online gambling is illegal in the US, wasn't this bound to happen? Even if the companies are located elsewhere you have to live up to the laws of the country in which you reside, no?
Online gambling isn't illegal in the US.
Of all the inaccurate statements in this thread, this is probably the inaccuratest.
20 years in prison; fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered; 3 years supervised release; forfeiture of proceeds of offense
Is that who's getting charged and what they can get?
There's a link to the Department of Justice pdf of the filing in the OP. It details the charges.
Oh, sorry, not really in the mood for reading legal stuff in .pdf format right now
On April 16 2011 04:24 Propane wrote: If the United States were acting rationally they would simply tax cocaine at a reasonable rate and allow drug addicts to continue doing what they enjoy. If you live in the United States or any other jurisdiction which is attempting to ban cocaine please contact your representative and let them know that you are in favor of allowing people to do drugs.
By outlawing cocaine the United States is wasting resources enforcing a silly law when they could instead allow a business to thrive and produce entertainment for millions of people.
Additionally, allowing companies to operate inside the USA would allow better consumer protection.
See now how bad your argument sounds?
His argument doesn't sound bad at all. It's true that the drug war is an enormous money sink that does not yield benefits. Drug legalization would in all likelihood significantly reduce our drug problem in many ways, including reduced crime, extra revenue, and greater consumer safety.
The government should not be so heavy handed in what they let a person do, so long as it does not harm anyone else. What a person does with their money and their body is up to them.
The USA allows lotteries, which is just large-scale distributed gambling. Stocks, housing investments, these are all legal forms of gambling. Why are they trying so hard to make poker illegal?
simple as hell to understand WHY. look at vegas.
Vegas is probably the most controlled, highly regulated areas anywhere in the world, despite the facade of entertainment they try to present. and it wasn't always that way.
bottom line is this. You can run almost any kind of business you want - as long as the government knows about it, and if you're dealing with enormous sums of money - you're paying your taxes, properly reporting your income, you're acquiring all the proper licenses for what you're doing - the government is completely kosher with it.
All they care really is, they get a piece of your pie. When you cut uncle sam out of the equation, he's out to get you. Now apply this understanding to what's been happening with online poker. Seriously you're a smart guy. You're not obtuse by nature. You knew within yourself, that gambling is shady business itself, but you got blindsided by all these online poker sites popping up, and since you see the adverts everywhere, you assume it must all be totally legal and kosher.
Not to mention the huge fad around televised poker with all these personalities who make the scene look so cool and interesting. Especially that actress(can't remember her name), who caused quite a splash with her general appearance and her unique strategy(you know who i'm talking about).
My question is why doesn't the government come to an agreement with the poker sites for regulation. That way they can get their "piece of the pie", and everybody will be happy. Instead, they waste money to chase down the poker sites, while the sites waste money to continue to evade them. Sounds like a lose/lose to me.
I don't know for sure which side is unwilling to negotiate on the matter, but my impression was that it's the government.
Cash-outs for people outside of the USA seem to be working for the people that can still enter the sites from what I hear from friends (payout for people outside the USA isn't working with American bank accounts so the FBI can't block those as easily as they seem to have done with the American accounts). But then again I don't have any details on if they actually received the money in their bank accounts.
Currently every poker player outside the USA with money on one of the effected sites is making a dash for the cash out register.
Although as the common reaction under many players seems to be at this moment that this whole situation won't effect players from outside the USA I wouldn't be surprised if the Pokersites would close down their check out ability to prevent a widespread panic.
On April 16 2011 06:14 Slithe wrote:My question is why doesn't the government come to an agreement with the poker sites for regulation. That way they can get their "piece of the pie", and everybody will be happy. Instead, they waste money to chase down the poker sites, while the sites waste money to continue to evade them. Sounds like a lose/lose to me.
For the same reason Blizzard does not come to an agreement about BW rights: they'd rather get rid of it and have people doing other stuff. After all gambling is a sin amirite?
On April 16 2011 06:02 thekoven wrote: I just re-installed pokerstars to see if I could get my money out and IT WORKED. I logged into my account and cashier and got a check sent to my home just in case. I hope this works... Fuckin bullshit.
On April 16 2011 05:45 Fayth wrote: cashed out 6k on stars and i got it instantly
Glad to hear that. Hope you can recover the 69K(ish) remaining
Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry
The internet is still coming to grips with the huge online gambling bust that just took down the U.S.'s three biggest online poker sites.
But Australia's Courier-Mail already has the scoop on the one man who may have single-handedly built the online industry ... then handed it to the U.S. government on a platter.
He made Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars millions of dollars — and making as much $150,000 a day for himself — but then got even more greedy and started taking them for himself. They sued him, demanding more than $100 million of their own money back.
Then last April, Tzvetkoff was arrested in Las Vegas and charged with the same crimes those sites founders were charged with today: money laundering, bank fraud, wire fraud.
Then after a "secret" meeting with prosecutors, he was suddenly out on bail. And now, his former colleagues are the ones facing serious jail time.
Daniel Tzvetkoff knows the operations of these poker site inside and out. He's the one man positioned to give these companies to the U.S. Attorneys on a silver platter. And it looks like that's exactly what he did, cooperating with the authorities to avoid his own lengthy jail sentence.
They ratted him out ... and he turned the tables. No honor among thieves.
20 years in prison; fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered; 3 years supervised release; forfeiture of proceeds of offense
Is that who's getting charged and what they can get?
There's a link to the Department of Justice pdf of the filing in the OP. It details the charges.
Oh, sorry, not really in the mood for reading legal stuff in .pdf format right now
On April 16 2011 04:24 Propane wrote: If the United States were acting rationally they would simply tax cocaine at a reasonable rate and allow drug addicts to continue doing what they enjoy. If you live in the United States or any other jurisdiction which is attempting to ban cocaine please contact your representative and let them know that you are in favor of allowing people to do drugs.
By outlawing cocaine the United States is wasting resources enforcing a silly law when they could instead allow a business to thrive and produce entertainment for millions of people.
Additionally, allowing companies to operate inside the USA would allow better consumer protection.
See now how bad your argument sounds?
His argument doesn't sound bad at all. It's true that the drug war is an enormous money sink that does not yield benefits. Drug legalization would in all likelihood significantly reduce our drug problem in many ways, including reduced crime, extra revenue, and greater consumer safety.
The government should not be so heavy handed in what they let a person do, so long as it does not harm anyone else. What a person does with their money and their body is up to them.
The USA allows lotteries, which is just large-scale distributed gambling. Stocks, housing investments, these are all legal forms of gambling. Why are they trying so hard to make poker illegal?
simple as hell to understand WHY. look at vegas.
Vegas is probably the most controlled, highly regulated areas anywhere in the world, despite the facade of entertainment they try to present. and it wasn't always that way.
bottom line is this. You can run almost any kind of business you want - as long as the government knows about it, and if you're dealing with enormous sums of money - you're paying your taxes, properly reporting your income, you're acquiring all the proper licenses for what you're doing - the government is completely kosher with it.
All they care really is, they get a piece of your pie. When you cut uncle sam out of the equation, he's out to get you. Now apply this understanding to what's been happening with online poker. Seriously you're a smart guy. You're not obtuse by nature. You knew within yourself, that gambling is shady business itself, but you got blindsided by all these online poker sites popping up, and since you see the adverts everywhere, you assume it must all be totally legal and kosher.
Not to mention the huge fad around televised poker with all these personalities who make the scene look so cool and interesting. Especially that actress(can't remember her name), who caused quite a splash with her general appearance and her unique strategy(you know who i'm talking about).
My question is why doesn't the government come to an agreement with the poker sites for regulation. That way they can get their "piece of the pie", and everybody will be happy. Instead, they waste money to chase down the poker sites, while the sites waste money to continue to evade them. Sounds like a lose/lose to me.
I don't know for sure which side is unwilling to negotiate on the matter, but my impression was that it's the government.
Because thats how the laws are at the moment, yes it's that stupid. And there's probably more people who care whether online gambling is illegal or not.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4da896d7ccd1d5a30d130000/daniel-tzvetkoff-online-poker-fbi.jpg)
