Poker News - Ten sites seized by US Department of Justice in poker related indictments; WSOP Odds

WASHINGTON D.C. - April 15th 2011 will forever be known as Black Friday in the online poker world. The big three online poker sites operating in the United States (PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and UltimateBet/Absolute Poker) were shut down by the United States Department of Justice (USDJ) after they issued an indictment on the sites founders in relation to bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.

With poker players from the USA effectively banned from playing online poker at the most popular sites without any notice they had no time at all to withdraw their funds. Since Black Friday, only PokerStars has began the long process of paying back their American players. Full Tilt Poker, the second largest poker site, has assured all US players that their funds are safe but is yet to pay back a cent. Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker are sites that have struggled to compete after a series of controversies and have lost around 80 per cent of their traffic since Black Friday.

Yesterday the Department of Justice issued a statement announcing that Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk of BetEd and Ann Marie Puig of BMX Entertainment are being charged in two separate indictments. They are all charged with conducting an illegal gambling business and money laundering.

The most recognisable name of the ten domain names that were seized is DoylesRoom, a poker room on the Yatahay Poker Network. Doyle Brunson, a legendary poker player, who the site was named after had recently severed all ties with the site.

The ten domains that were seized by the Department of Justice are; Bookmaker.com, 2Betsdi.com, Funtimebingo.com, Goldenarchcasino.com, Truepoker.com, Betmaker.com, Betgrandesports.com, Doylesroom.com, Betehorse.com and Beted.com.

The investigation into the two companies "illegal" activities were shown up by a fake payment processing company set up by the Department of Homeland Security called Linwood. The company processed over 300,000 transactions totalling $30m throughout 2009 both to and from online poker sites. Linwood also did business with Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet as well as the sites named in this indictment.

According to the USDJ statement "The indictments allege that the defendants own and manage illegal gambling businesses involving online sports betting. The affidavit alleges that online gambling sites are run by companies located outside of the U.S., while the majority of customers are in the U.S. Internet gambling operators rely upon the U.S. banking system, and more specifically, money-processing business generally called “payment processors,” to facilitate the movement of funds to and from their customers, the gamblers. Typically, an internet gambling operator directs the payment processor to collect funds from individual gamblers which are used to wager with the gambling organization. Those gambling proceeds are transferred to an offshore foreign bank. The internet gambling operator then sends a check or wire transfer from an offshore bank to the payment processor, directing the payment processor to distribute the money to gamblers for their winnings."

U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said of the indictments, "It is illegal for internet gambling enterprises to do business in Maryland, regardless of where the website operator is located. We cannot allow foreign website operators to flout the law simply because their headquarters are based outside the country.”

In other Black Friday related news, it was reported that Bradley Franzen, one of the eleven people named in the original Black Friday indictments, plead guilty to lesser charges at a court in New York in exchange for testimony against some of the others named in the case.

WSOP 2011

With the World Series of Poker coming up it will be interesting to see the effect of the ban of online poker against U.S players on the numbers of players turning up to play events even with a likely bigger influx of European and other players.

Phil Ivey, a sponsored pro with Full Tilt Poker and one of the highest tournament earners ever is top priced at 66/1 (bet £10 to make £660 profit) with bet365 to win the Main Event. Erik Seidel, who has won over $4m in tournaments this year alone (mostly in High Roller events with small, elite fields and very high buy ins) is 125/1 with the same bookmaker.

Vanessa Selbst is top priced at 10/1 with bet365 to be the top performing woman in this year's WSOP, while Britain's EPT winning Liv Boeree is 11/1 at Sportingbet.

In the top Great Britain and Ireland player betting dual WSOP bracelet winner and PokerStars pro JP Kelly is 12/1 at Sportingbet, with Blackbeltpoker.com founder and serial WSOP casher Neil Channing quoted at best odds of 16/1 at the same bookmaker.