In a recent blow to online poker community, Eleven top online gambling companies including 3 of the top online Poker rooms: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker were charged for serious offences, including money laundering, illegal gambling, and other banking frauds. More than 75 bank accounts in 14 countries and 5 domain names used by these companies for their money transactions and site hosting were also seized. As told in a press release, top officials of these gaming companies were thrashing 2006 US anti gaming law, which prohibits any bank or financial institution to process any gambling related funds to any of the online gaming portals. According to a federal authority, these companies will face a penalty of around $3 Millions for their illicit activates. Merge network sites like lock poker are taking serious advantage of this situation with traffic exponentially multiplying over the past few days.
How they claimed to continue gambling wagers.
On 13th Oct 2006, US government passed Unlawful Gambling Enforcement Act that specifically prohibits any of gambling companies to accept money from US players. It includes offshore gaming portal, as well. But, big gaming portal like PokerStars, Absolute Poker, etc. continues their operations and keeps accepting US players’ wager for their gambling activities.
According to UGEA, banks or any other financial institution also can’t process any funds mean to be used for gambling purposes. To counter this hurdle, Internet gaming companies have started a new practice of bribing top officials of ill running banks, use them as their payment processor and enjoy billion of gambling money in their way. In return, these gaming operators offered them (bank) the lucrative investments to overcome out of their recessional positions.
The founders of PokerStars and Full tilt poker, Isai Scheinberg and Raymond Bitar have not been arrested so far for their non- presence on US soil. However, federal authorities with the help of foreign governments and Interpol, are confident enough to catch them very soon.
Safest place for US Players to play online poker for real money
There is no doubt that the merge poker network has been the number one winner from the recent goings on with traffic up a whopping 23%. Merge released the following statement yesterday “We are still accepting players from the USA and around the world and will continue to do so. All players’ funds are 100% safe and secure on the Merge Network.” Lock Poker in particular is capitalizing on the situation and is offering new players a huge welcome bonus of 100% up to $1,200.
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