Have you checked your account lately

Thousands of online accounts have been seized by the FBI

Online poker is one of the industries where you can win lots of money, without any large investment, and this is why it caught on in many parts of the world. There are, however, areas where online gambling is forbidden altogether, and online gambling companies have to find a way to go around that law. This is exactly the case with the United States laws. Back in 2006, online gambling became pretty much illegal, and despite the fact that there were still many online gambling companies active on the market, many of them were active in less than legal ways, which included fraud in many cases.

The authorities were secretly on top of things, though, and this Friday (which has quickly gotten the name of “Black Friday”), it seems that all hell broke loose for the several online poker sites that were operating well under the legal limit. Several key online poker sites were raided, and more than three billion dollars were seized, striking a huge blow, and scoring a huge win for the authorities. In addition, many members of the online poker world were arrested, including PokerStars’ Paul Tate and Isai Scheinberg, Full Tilt Poker’s Nelson Burtnick and Raymond Bitar, and Absolute Poker’s Brent Beckley. Each of them is now faced with a thirty year jail time. But the whole investigation seems to be several years old, as precisely one year ago another significant arrest was made. That time, it was Australian Daniel Tzvetkoff, who was apparently an important figure in the money laundering operation conducted by the online poker giants. When faced with up to 75 years in prison, Tzvetkoff was more than willing to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies, an action whose consequences were more than apparent on Friday.

At this time, all of the online poker sites that were raided (Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, UB Poker and Poker Stars) have their websites shut down, as their domain names are seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is uncertain when they will be back up, but all of the companies are assuring their players that no money is being lost, and that they can still play, provided that they are outside of the United States.

No matter what the case is from now on, though, one thing is for sure: if you are from within the US, you can forget about playing on these sites for now. There are however still online poker sites for US players, and if it all turns out well, then this is the first step to legalizing poker.

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