These guys pay off some people to process their CC transactions, to the tune of millions of dollars ... the U.S. Attorney's office is all over them. O.K., I get it.
Financial Institutions in the U.S. repackage sub-prime loans as AAA investments, effectively stealing TRILLIONS of dollars from innocent investors, some losing their life savings; and causing towns and companies to lose their investments for schools, infrastructure, pensions etc. The U.S. Attorney's office makes a scape goat out of a couple of small fry... No companies, CEOs, Directors, investigated or arrested.(that I know of)
I think the U.S. Attorney's office's priorities are messed up.
Online poker giants dealt fraud charges
Summary
Several founders of the three largest Internet poker companies doing business in the U.S. have been arrested on charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and other online gambling-related offenses.
Topics
Several founders of the three largest Internet poker companies doing business in the U.S. have been arrested as part of an indictment that includes charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and other online gambling-related offenses, the U.S. Attorney's office said today.
The three offshore companies--PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker--are accused of circumventing a 2006 U.S. law that prohibits financial institutions from handling transactions for online gambling sites. Prosecutors say they allegedly tricked U.S. banks and credit card issuers into processing billions of dollars in transactions that appeared to be legitimate sales on hundreds of fake online retail sites purportedly selling jewelry and golf balls. One-third of the money allegedly went directly to the poker companies as revenue through a fee charged to players on each poker hand played, according to the indictment, which was unsealed today in U.S. District Court in New York.
After U.S. banks and financial institutions detected fraudulent bank accounts and shut them down, the defendants allegedly paid a few small, financially troubled banks money as investments in return for processing the payments, according to the indictment. The deals allegedly included a $10 million investment in a private Utah bank that gave the poker companies more than a 30 percent ownership stake, prosecutors said.
For more on this story, read Internet poker giants indicted in U.S. crackdown on CNET News.
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Unfortunately, this is a US Attorney in New York trying to make a name for himself in an illegal manner. In fact the shutdown was an illegal shutdown. The federal government (it was an FBI operation that shut the sites down) has no jurisdiction over the Internet or Internet domain names. The FBI's action represents exactly the same type of Internet censorship that everyone in this country was very vocal in denouncing when China did it. The Internet is a privately held confederation of member sites that have agreed to use a doman name manager that just happens to be a US company. For the FBI to use pressure on that company to shut down and redirect the real money domain names of those poker sites is criminal infringement at best. Do we really have to resort to criminal acts to try to enforce an ill-advised law that was narrowly passed by a bunch of moralistic idiots in congress? Shame on us for being as bad as China in the area of human rights!
Careful guys, if you hurt his feelings he will go off and start yet another unfunded war with even more borrowed money.
@bhaskins@
I didn't know the US Attorneys could start wars.
I didn't know the US Attorneys could start wars.
If you think this is good and the FBI should not be there, you missed the point. People were cheated, it was not fair, or honest, The game of Poker was designed for people to lose money, and money laundered, and etc.
I have no problem with gambling. Why is it even illegal. Oh yeah, it's only legal when government can skim the profits just like the mafia did it. Then it's legal.
Playing poker for money on the internet on unlicensed and unregulated sites is for MUGS! They control the computers and could quite easily set up the server to show them all the players hands and control what cards a player receives. Then they just need to put a ringer in to the game and they could slowly take all your money without you knowing they are cheating!
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