Famous Online Gambling Sites Banned By FBI

fbi poker The FBI has long been targeting to ban online poker and gambling sites from tapping the US player base.

The ban imposed by the FBI on the domain names of the famed 3 sites serving the US market like the FullTiltPoker.com, PokerStars.com and AbsolutePoker.com, as being responsible for initiating illegal gambling activity and fraud charges for allowing players to sign and play for real money games in their sites.

It is indeed a bold move by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI has accused 11 people involved in the charge that consists of the payment processors and the owners of the site

Isai Scheinberg, Paul Tate from Poker Stars
Raymond Bitar, Nelson Burtnick from Full Tilt Poker
Scott Tom, Brent Beckley from Absolute Poker
Ryan Lang, Ira Rubin, Bradley Franzen, Chad Elie and John Campos who are the payment processors having done the job of enabling fund transfer to the respective gambling sites for betting purposes.

The business properties of the online poker sites including their domain names like www.PokerStars.com, www.FullTiltPoker.com and www.AbsolutePoker.com were seized on Saturday; however, Poker Stars and Full Tilt have redirected their domain names to domain names of their business serving UK. The home pages used to be showing the seizure certification on the domain names before.

The charges on the site are on the grounds of violating clauses from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and organizing the gambling business illegally without due permission. The charge also consists of activities involving bank fraud, bribing, and wire fraud leading to money laundering activities to tap in billions of illegal dollars out of the country.

The legal penalties expected are 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fine or 30 years in prison or it might be fixed after due estimation of the gross gain or loss sustained by the business.

The FBI Assistant Director has also told that these businesses have lied to the bank about the nature of their business.

Poker Stars and Full Tilt are leading sponsors for ESPN Poker Programming and it is likely that ESPN might defend its sponsors; Poker Alliance has as well come to the rescue and support of the poker sites. We need to wait to witness the next to come.