The online poker world –especially in the United States– is breathing a collective sigh of relief today after the news that the PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have come to an agreement with the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara.
The agreement only deals with the seizure of the .com domain names, the security of player deposits at the sites, and PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker’s place in the US market. Basically, in exchange for their domain names back –which they cite as necessary to begin returning players deposits from the US—PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have agreed to leave the US market and will no longer be offering real-money poker games.
Here is a portion of the press release issued by US Attorney Preet Bharara:
“Under the terms of the agreements with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, the companies agreed that they would not allow for, facilitate, or provide the ability for players located in the United States to engage in playing online poker for “real money” or any other thing of value. The agreements allow for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to use the pokerstars.com andfulltiltpoker.com domain names to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies. The deposit of funds by U.S. players is expressly prohibited. In addition, the agreements do not prohibit, and, in fact, expressly allow for, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to provide for, and facilitate, players outside of the United States to engage in playing online poker for real money. The agreements also require the appointment of an independent Monitor to verify PokerStars’ and Full Tilt Poker’s compliance with the agreements. The Government stands to enter the same agreement with Absolute Poker if it so chooses.”
A closer look at the above statement shows that at this time Absolute Poker has either not reached or deal or has decided not to negotiate with the DOJ –which is a very bad sign for players at the Cereus Poker Network.
Full Tilt Poker issued their own statement on the deal, but was a little more pessimistic in terms of precisely when US players would begin to receive their withdrawals:
“Full Tilt Poker™ is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to regain the use of its worldwide domain name, www.fulltiltpoker.com.
“Although players in the United States will not be permitted to engage in real-money play, the agreement expressly allows for real-money play outside of the United States.
“In addition, the agreement represents an important first step towards returning funds to U.S. players because it allows Full Tilt Poker to utilize its domain to facilitate the withdrawal of player funds. But, unfortunately, there remain significant practical and legal impediments to returning funds to players in the immediate future. As a result of the recent enforcement action, there exists no authorized U.S. payment channel through which to make refunds; Full Tilt Poker has no accounting of the millions of dollars of player funds that were seized by the government; and the government has not agreed to permit any of the seized player funds to be returned to the players.
“Finally, there are numerous legal and jurisdictional issues that must be considered before poker winnings can be paid out to players throughout the United States. While Full Tilt Poker continues to believe that online poker is not illegal under federal law or in 49 states, the indictment and civil forfeiture action filed last Friday require Full Tilt Poker to proceed with caution in this area.
“Notwithstanding these issues, Full Tilt Poker is ready to work diligently with the United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York to try and resolve these issues and to get players their money back as soon as possible.”
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Written by Steve Ruddock on April 23rd, 2011