Yesterday shock waves were sent through the online poker community and five USA facing poker rooms were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The poker rooms that were forced to stop doing real money business were UB.com, Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Ultimate Bet. There have been several arrests in this case including the founders of these sites as well as a few people involved in the fraudulent payment processing. The charges against the defendants range between money laundering and fraud, and the FBI released a sweeping indictment as of yesterday April, 15th 2011.
PokerStars has already started taking action and blocked all American players from accessing their accounts and playing for real money in their table games or tournaments. Full Tilt Poker also followed suit and released a full statement regarding depositing and withdrawing for players in the USA. Absolute Poker and UB.com have not commented on the indictment.
There have already been rumors speculating who caused this all to happen. We all remember Daniel Tzvetkoff, well he is said to have handed the FBI these poker rooms without thinking twice. This is to get himself out of trouble experts say, as he was arrested and charged with numerous counts back in 2010. The charges against these poker rooms as of yesterday some would say were expected, but changed online poker for now, nonetheless.
