'And after these gentlemen behind me, as well as hundreds of other FBI agents across the country, called me complaining about the money they had frozen on Stars and Tilt, I was like, all right, enough already, I'll figure out a way for you to get your money back. Damn, all you guys were playing online poker?'
Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), announced on Wednesday that the Government has agreed to allow
PokerStars and
Full Tilt Poker use of their .com domains again.
In making this agreement, U.S. players will be able to execute withdrawals from their accounts.
While the release states that, “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,” it doesn’t necessarily connect the dots that the actual bank accounts those funds existed in were frozen. So yeah, technically your xxAssMan69xx player account wasn’t frozen–but the actual bank accounts that real money resided in was. We can only assume then that the DoJ is working with Stars and Tilt (through their “independent Monitor”) to facilitate these transactions from the frozen accounts.
AP/
UB is not part of this agreement, but has been offered the same arrangement by the DoJ.
So how in the world did this happen so quickly?
There were probably a lot of FBI agents and Government officials that had money frozen in these accounts. And a lot of angry calls were placed to Preet Bharara. Which in turn made him move a lot more quickly than he’d typically move on an issue like this. Also, by striking a deal this quickly, the SDNY/DoJ helped effectively squash at least a portion of the loud public backlash this case has created.
Once again, all wise moves by the SDNY/DoJ. They know what they’re doing.
Read the full release
here.
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Full Tilt and PokerStars Regain .com Domain Names and Player Money is Safe (UPDATED 1
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