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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. |
On April 16 2011 04:44 Kipsate wrote:
Non-violent means little, it is more of a white-collar crime, and money laundering is quite a serious offense.
It's only called "money laundering" because their enterprise isn't legally condoned by the government. That's it. No money was stolen here. No people were wronged. No one was hurt. It doesn't take much critical thinking to see that nothing that the purveyors of the poker site did nothing inherently criminal or immoral. They broke unjust laws, and they will face an unjust punishment if convicted.
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On April 16 2011 04:45 TURKISHRAMBO wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 04:41 Wohmfg wrote:On April 16 2011 04:35 Modafinil wrote:On April 16 2011 04:28 Wohmfg wrote:On April 16 2011 04:21 Modafinil wrote:On April 16 2011 04:15 Wohmfg wrote:On April 16 2011 04:07 StarStruck wrote:
It's just one of the risks you take by doing it. :/ No it really isn't. Don't make it sound like it's the poker players' fault for losing the money. This is not something anyone could have ever foreseen. Ever. There were maybe like a few thousand people in the whole world who knew what was going on. Say you get struck by a meteor playing golf. That is not one of the risks of playing golf. I think I just lost my £400 for my euro trip then.  While I sympathize with the players who lost money, I think "meteor while playing golf" is a bit over-dramatic. The fact is online poker has always been a grey area, whether it was the passage of the UIGEA in 2006 or just the sites themselves having problems with cheating and shills. A lot of you are probably too young to remember this but online poker has been on the government's radar for almost a decade. It was always a question of WHEN the "meteor" would hit, not IF. That said there was no telling when. It sucks that it happened now, but it was inevitable. Why are you comparing cheating at online poker to this? They are not the same at all and it isn't relevant. Don't call poker a "grey area". The UIGEA has nothing to do with me. It should not have affected me. http://www.pokerstars.com/legislation/uigea/ I don't know how many times I have to explain this. The poker sites were allegedly engaged in fraud and money laundering. Whether or not you were legally depositing there, they were allegedly doing illegal things with your money. As a result, the assets of the companies are being seized - including your money. I understand that. It says that in the OP. The UIGEA is a law in a country that I am not a citizen of. I gave my money to an American company with the faith that they were operating legally. As far as I am aware, there was nothing to indicate to me that they were operating illegally. If you could point me to some evidence that would show that I was stupid for doing this then please go ahead. That is, evidence that is readily available to anyone and that highlights the possibility of the scenario the poker sites are facing now. Your point about the cheating in poker has no relevance on this subject at all. i dont know law or anything but i think exactly this. Not giving the money back to their rightful owners would be complete bullshit and IMO immoral. Lots of people have alot of money on these sites.
Same could be said for all the people that got done by Madoff, stock market crashes, and dodgy bankers unfortunately the world isn't always fair
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On April 16 2011 04:42 EtherealDeath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 04:37 Soap wrote:
It is reasonable to assume the most of the money is held outside of the US and therefore not under their jurisdiction. There's a reason most poker sites are private companies and located at fiscal paradises. I assume the gov could fine PS/etc for some huge amount that would require taking the money out of their havens? I guess those people better not be in the US anywhere in the near future, and hope that their countries don't extradite.
They simply would be unable to enforce it, because the nature of online poker doesn't require them to have any presence in the US or even exist under US law. What they could and are trying to is to prevent US borne funds to reach them, which is a drawback but by no means catrastrophic. There's enough of a market elsewere, as PartyPoker and others who fully withdrew from the US demonstrate.
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On April 16 2011 03:45 relyt wrote:Wtf man so my money is gone!?!? Why does the US care so much if I play poker online .
They care because they aren't getting paid for you to play...
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Just withdraw a reasonable amount from full tilt. Premium Bank Wire. It went through, but who knows if I actually will ever see that money. If not, I'm pretty boned.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/boy-genius-online-poker-scandal-2011-4
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.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/web-kings-life-on-the-line/story-fn6ck45n-1226039907165
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On April 16 2011 04:41 Wohmfg wrote:
The UIGEA is a law in a country that I am not a citizen of. I gave my money to an American company with the faith that they were operating legally. As far as I am aware, there was nothing to indicate to me that they were operating illegally.
Good faith isn't going to get you anywhere here, unfortunately. Again, sucks to be you, but you have no recourse. The assets of the company are the subject of an in rem seizure - legally speaking, you're completely unrelated to the matter here. The assets are property connected to an illegal activity - fraud and money laundering to avoid UIGEA.
If you could point me to some evidence that would show that I was stupid for doing this then please go ahead. That is, evidence that is readily available to anyone and that highlights the possibility of the scenario the poker sites are facing now.
I mean, it should have been fairly obvious once UIGEA was passed in the first place - that's when I quit (though for other reasons too). Everyone knew that, in practice, UIGEA was just going to be make the whole deposit/withdrawal process more difficult. But did anyone really think that was going to be the end of it? I certainly didn't.
I definitely understand that people weren't aware of what the situation was like going into poker. No, there probably was no way to know directly if you got into the game late, especially in the past couple years. The FBI investigation has been going on since 2009 from what I understand.
Your point about the cheating in poker has no relevance on this subject at all.
Not directly, no. It's just that the whole area has been kind of... iffy. I mean, you have to realize that for every cheater that's caught, there's probably an order of magnitude more who aren't, right? Online poker definitely got me some good returns in 2004/2005, when it was still new and full of fish and nobody was using tracking sites like sharkscope. But it wasn't going to last, and it didn't.
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Thank god I pulled out last semester.
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so does non-US players need to worry about their money?
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Just after I ordered my bathrobe, watch, and fulltilt poker hat. Hope I'll still get it.
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On April 16 2011 04:51 Manit0u wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/boy-genius-online-poker-scandal-2011-4Show nested quote +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. http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/web-kings-life-on-the-line/story-fn6ck45n-1226039907165
WOW JUST WOW.
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On April 16 2011 04:45 TURKISHRAMBO wrote:
i dont know law or anything but i think exactly this.
Not giving the money back to their rightful owners would be complete bullshit and IMO immoral. Lots of people have alot of money on these sites.
Well, it's not really about who the "rightful owners" are. Currently, all the money is in possesion of the poker sites. They have liabilities towards all their players with bankrolls on their sites. However, if the pokers sites are convicted, they will have liabilities towards the US government. With all their US bank accounts frozen the money on them cannot be accessed by anybody. After the trial the money from these accounts will be distributed to the entities that the poker sites have liabilities towards. Now guess, which liabilites will be covered first... Furthermore, if the fines become too huge the poker sites can go broke. If this happens, there is absolutely no way that the users (from anywhere) see their money ever again.
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On April 16 2011 04:55 ondik wrote:
so does non-US players need to worry about their money?
Yes. Like it was stated somewhere before in this thread, it's not "their money" any more. It's all going to be seized as evidence by US govt.
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On April 16 2011 04:56 JFO wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 04:51 Manit0u wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/boy-genius-online-poker-scandal-2011-4Meet 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. http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/web-kings-life-on-the-line/story-fn6ck45n-1226039907165 WOW JUST WOW.
This is my reaction precisely, wow. Fascinating read.
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On April 16 2011 04:55 ondik wrote:
so does non-US players need to worry about their money?
I can't withdraw from stars right now, got ~$10k there right now as well. I'm in the UK.
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What the shit. I only have like a few hundred in... but still goddamnit
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On April 16 2011 04:51 Manit0u wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/boy-genius-online-poker-scandal-2011-4Show nested quote +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. http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/web-kings-life-on-the-line/story-fn6ck45n-1226039907165
Sounds like something out of a movie.. incredible.
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On April 16 2011 04:57 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 04:55 ondik wrote:
so does non-US players need to worry about their money? Yes. Like it was stated somewhere before in this thread, it's not "their money" any more. It's all going to be seized as evidence by US govt.
That would be right if all the players funds are held in the US, which doesn't make any sense.
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On April 16 2011 04:48 AKspartan wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 04:44 Kipsate wrote:
Non-violent means little, it is more of a white-collar crime, and money laundering is quite a serious offense. It's only called "money laundering" because their enterprise isn't legally condoned by the government. That's it. No money was stolen here. No people were wronged. No one was hurt. It doesn't take much critical thinking to see that nothing that the purveyors of the poker site did nothing inherently criminal or immoral. They broke unjust laws, and they will face an unjust punishment if convicted.
LOL, kind of like how not being allowed to print your own money is unjust right?
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This is fucking huge, i wonder how much people like Tom Dwan, Antonius, etc, are gonna lose.
Just wow.
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EPT
