'Black Friday' and associated fallout megathread

[Charade You Are]

Just to finish spinning our heads around, if what we've just discussed above is indeed the correct interpretation of this passage* then I'm not seeing the bit where it's OK for transactions to go one way but not the other. It would seem to me to apply equally to all transactions. Am I missing something?

This is the real bad guy (Signed Nov 12, 2008)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20081112a1.pdf

§___.2 Restricted transaction. Several commenters asked the Agencies to clarify that the definition of "restricted transaction" would not apply to funds going to a consumer (i.e., a gambler), as opposed to funds going to a commercial customer (i.e., an Internet gambling business). The Act defines "restricted transaction" in § 5362(7) as "any transaction…which the recipient is prohibited from accepting under section 5363." In turn, § 5363 provides that "[n]o person engaged in the business of betting or wagering may knowingly accept" a payment "in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling." Under the final rule, the term "restricted transaction" would not include funds going to a gambler, and would only include funds going to an Internet gambling business.

 

[OzExorcist]

They are serious charges, but the underlying acts were not.

bank fraud/money laundering = "oh, that money was for flowers"

Gimme a break. It's one thing to call it money laundering when its gun runners or terrorists trying to "clean" their money, but my $20 deposit? The money was never "dirty" to begin with.

Take a bad law and try to enforce it using other laws and scary terms and fool the public into thinking - wow these guys are really bad.

*shrugs*

We can talk about the relative seriousness and public harm done by defrauding bands and money laundering for those purposes and money laundering for these purposes but at the end of the day it's still money laundering, it's still fraud, it's still illegal and they still got caught. The fact that they did it in spite of a stupid law isn't likely to save them.

Plus remember that they bought their own bank and bribed people. It wasn't just LOL flower-and-golf-ballaments.

 

[OzExorcist]

This is the real bad guy (Signed Nov 12, 2008)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20081112a1.pdf

§___.2 Restricted transaction. Several commenters asked the Agencies to clarify that the definition of "restricted transaction" would not apply to funds going to a consumer (i.e., a gambler), as opposed to funds going to a commercial customer (i.e., an Internet gambling business). The Act defines "restricted transaction" in § 5362(7) as "any transaction…which the recipient is prohibited from accepting under section 5363." In turn, § 5363 provides that "[n]o person engaged in the business of betting or wagering may knowingly accept" a payment "in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling." Under the final rule, the term "restricted transaction" would not include funds going to a gambler, and would only include funds going to an Internet gambling business.

Ah. Thanks.

So aside from the fact that all their payment processors have been shut down there aren't any legal impediments to the sites refunding US players since payments to players have always been exempt?

 

[Charade You Are]

That's how I'm reading it.

If you're bored, read the beginning. It will make you sick how close we came to having poker exempt - if not for the government coc..um..jerks.

 

[OzExorcist]

Will see how I go on reading the whole thing - not being American I've never looked into it that deeply until now.

The Australian legislation, on the other hand, I've read in full. It's nowhere near as convoluted as this, though the logic behind it is equally as confounding...

 

[Charade You Are]

Plus remember that they bought their own bank and bribed people. It wasn't just LOL flower-and-golf-ballaments.

Make a law where the only illegal act is accepting $. What the hell is that about? And bribes? LOL, how do you think this world runs?

You have to forgive me but I believe in civil disobedience and jury-nullification, I hate stupid laws, and have a total lack of faith that government can do anything right. And if you are unfairly getting screwed then you have the right to fight back.

Probably won't get you out of paying a fine or going to jail though, unfortunately.

 

[Charade You Are]

The Australian legislation, on the other hand, I've read in full. It's nowhere near as convoluted as this, though the logic behind it is equally as confounding...

I was reading something about that. Sounded nuts.

And I always thought Australia was a really cool place. My neighbor is from there and she's married to an Englishman. Kids have interesting accents

 

[deucem]

This may appear to be a dumb question but I was wondering.....

Given that, before black Friday the timing of most major tournaments were usually set to start in USA "primetime" because that was where all of the money was, will the poker sites be changing the starting times of tourneys to "chase the money" in the next largest depositor country?

What is the next largest "depositor" country? germany, canada?

 

[bolda3]

The US only cares about money is and trying to police the world

 

[Roller]

Sad
Truly SAD ....

 

[OzExorcist]

Make a law where the only illegal act is accepting $. What the hell is that about? And bribes? LOL, how do you think this world runs?

What it's about is they found the way to get the outcome they wanted in their own jurisdiction.

I firmly believe that if the could have legislated directly against online gambling then they would have - after all, the US government legislated against sports betting and various other things. Thing is here the government knew all too well that all the sites operate outside of their jurisdiction and no US laws can ever touch them. Gambling is kind of pointless without money though, money has to travel through a bank at some point and they do have jurisdiction over American banks.

A solution of a similar nature is being proposed in Australia right now, specifically because our government recognises it can't touch the sites but it wants some other way to enforce its (or the brick and mortar casinos') wishes: https://www.cardschat.com/forum/general-poker-13/australia-no-such-thing-losing-bet-196579/

The US only cares about money is and trying to police the world

To be fair, in this instance they're only policing themselves and their own citizens. Whether those citizens appreciate the way they're being policed is another question entirely but the actions of the US government on this issue haven't stopped Stars, Tilt or party poker and others before them from operating outside the United States.

There are some minor operational hiccups for the rest of the world in the meantime but I don't think they're trying to tell the world how it should or shouldn't gamble online.

 

[isaac]

Sorry, but can someone please translate the above into plain English for the stupid Australian?

No matter how many times I read it I can't see how it affects banks at all, given that they're not "engaged in the business of betting or wagering*". All I can see is a prohibition against poker (and other gambling) sites accepting the transactions.

(* obviously we have to ignore the fact that day trading is most definitely a business of placing bets and wagers LOL)

by the way oz, congrats on winning the first non-us tourney should we start trcking these stats?

 

[Pascal-lf]

This may appear to be a dumb question but I was wondering.....

Given that, before black Friday the timing of most major tournaments were usually set to start in USA "primetime" because that was where all of the money was, will the poker sites be changing the starting times of tourneys to "chase the money" in the next largest depositor country?

What is the next largest "depositor" country? Germany, Canada?

The next largest country isn't a country but a group of countries - Europe. I think I read somewhere the remaining players are 60% Euro, 20% Canadian and 20% Australian/NZ, roughly.

SCOOP has already been moved back by 3 hours, and Stars is currently listening to players on 2p2 while considering whether to move back majors, etc.

 

[the Styb]

National Heads-Up Championship on NBC right now. Guess they didn't have time to rewind a few episodes of Heroes…

 

[dj11]

Nothing new in this news;

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cooper-online-poker-20110424,0,7275683.story

 

[Charade You Are]

Nothing new in this news;

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cooper-online-poker-20110424,0,7275683.story

"University of Illinois professor John W. Kindt told the Christian Science Monitor last week that online betting was "the crack cocaine of gambling, putting it in every living room, on every school desk and work desk, and on every iPhone and BlackBerry."

LOL. While I'm not against online casinos because I think adults should be able to make their own choices, those who oppose online betting are obviously unaware of all the "legal" ways gamblers can gamble, whether online or not.

Simply exempt poker from the UIGEA since games of skill are exempt.

 

[DetroitJimmy]

I do care about what is right and wrong. But all in all these poker companies with 10 figure profits had PLENTY of money to "legally bribe" lobbyist so we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. They had to know the DOJ wasn't attaching this stupid law to a bill that was going to pass for sure(Port security act) just to have it. I mean with all the lawyers and such working for them they had to know this was coming.

The only reason I can even think they would bribe banks/launder money is if they had advice to do so thinking they could beat the case. Either that or it takes more to bribe the government than I thought.

I guess my only real point is they should have known better. Grease the wrong palms and you are a criminal. In this case they might even call you a terrorist! Bribe(lobbyist, LOL legal crooks) the right people, and you can operate longer. Even though it will cost way more short term, at least they wouldn't be facing jail time and would still have their US player base.

 

[Joe Slick]

I've read a lot of these posts and a lot of them point out that it's not legal and not fair. Simply put, the DOJ did it because they could. They wanted to break the back of online poker. This will go through the courts and, perhaps, the DOJ will be found to have acted improperly. Someone in the DOJ will take a fall but by that time the damage will have been done.

In the everday world any law enforcement officer can arrest you for any reason and distrupt your life. Eventually the truth will come out, there will be apologies, and you will be exonerated, but the damage will have been done. You could be jobless and homeless for no reason.

If this was a mainline industry the DOJ would never have shut the whole industry down because of a few weasels. For example there is the list of frozen accounts and there are some big name banks in that list. Did they shut the banks down? They may have but I haven't seen it.

I dislike this as much as the rest of you; however, in a bizarre way, I think this paves the way for legalizing online poker in the US. The demand for US legal online poker has suddenly become immense. Also, there's a chance that all poker sites that will be legal to US players will start out on a level playing field. Hopefully, when that day comes, PS and Fulltilt will be available for US players.

 

[Pascal-lf]

The suggested legislation I've seen (so far at least) has called for a lengthy suspension period for any firms who operated after the 2006 Act in the US market - namely FTP/PS/UB.

 

[OzExorcist]

I do care about what is right and wrong. But all in all these poker companies with 10 figure profits had PLENTY of money to "legally bribe" lobbyist so we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. They had to know the DOJ wasn't attaching this stupid law to a bill that was going to pass for sure(Port security act) just to have it. I mean with all the lawyers and such working for them they had to know this was coming.

The only reason I can even think they would bribe banks/launder money is if they had advice to do so thinking they could beat the case. Either that or it takes more to bribe the government than I thought.

I guess my only real point is they should have known better. Grease the wrong palms and you are a criminal. In this case they might even call you a terrorist! Bribe(lobbyist, LOL legal crooks) the right people, and you can operate longer. Even though it will cost way more short term, at least they wouldn't be facing jail time and would still have their US player base.

A couple of things. First the sites were pursuing both avenues. They had to take the backdoor route to continue operating in the short term but they were spending time and money on the lobbying angle as well. The agreements Stars and Tilt announced with major land-based casino groups just before Black Friday were one part of it. IIRC there are also some Nevada-based politicians who are having to return campaign donations they received from Stars because it's now become embarrassing to all parties.

Second you've got to remember that legalised online gambling isn't a one-sided issue. It's got opponents and they've got truckloads of money on their side, as well as the status quo. Charade gave just one example a few posts back. For every dollar the sites could throw at the issue the opposition could throw more. I'd be pretty certain the opposition has more voters on its side too.

While the US is undoubtedly a big market it's not the only market and the sites do have to split their resources between trying to break the American market open and promote their services to the rest of the world. They might have big money pits but they're not bottomless and they have more than one thing they need to do with that money.

Lastly, as to why they'd do this, I suspect they were probably hoping that they were going to be successful in their legalisation attempts before the whole thing came crashing down, or that they were far enough removed from the whole thing that if some of the processors got taken down it wouldn't splash all the way back to the sites. Oops.

 

[DetroitJimmy]

^^^ Well put. I'm just on a pissed off rant cause I'm trying to play on sites right now with >10K people on them and life is sucking right now.

Guess when you put the whole thing in perspective, it just plain sucks and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it. I won't post anymore in this thread until I get some real news.

Peace out yall

 

[the Styb]

I'm getting tired of hearing the term "level playing field". The American B&M casino definition of this term seems to be "an arena where we will not have to compete against entities who have been doing this for over a decade while we've been sleeping, have built a solid, loyal American customer base and whose client software is free from bugs, visually pleasant and intuitive and works on both PC and MAC."

 

[pol_92121]

i had heard about that some weeks ago on tv but only about fulltilt.. iewas surprised to heard the same thing by ub and ps...

 

[OzExorcist]

I'm getting tired of hearing the term "level playing field". The American B&M casino definition of this term seems to be "an arena where we will not have to compete against entities who have been doing this for over a decade while we've been sleeping, have built a solid, loyal American customer base and whose client software is free from bugs, visually pleasant and intuitive and works on both PC and MAC."

You left out "...and the existing superpowers will be locked out for the forseeable future"

 

[nevadanick]

I do care about what is right and wrong. But all in all these poker companies with 10 figure profits had PLENTY of money to "legally bribe" lobbyist so we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. They had to know the DOJ wasn't attaching this stupid law to a bill that was going to pass for sure(Port security act) just to have it. I mean with all the lawyers and such working for them they had to know this was coming.

The only reason I can even think they would bribe banks/launder money is if they had advice to do so thinking they could beat the case. Either that or it takes more to bribe the government than I thought.

I guess my only real point is they should have known better. Grease the wrong palms and you are a criminal. In this case they might even call you a terrorist! Bribe (lobbyist, LOL legal crooks) the right people, and you can operate longer. Even though it will cost way more short term, at least they wouldn't be facing jail time and would still have their US player base.

It might help your discussion basis if you referred to lobbying and lobbyists in their correct purpose and functions.

'Lobbyists' are not politicians and are not the ones being brided. They are (although they deny it) the ones doing the bribing. Lobbyists and lobbying firms can be quite expensive and are hired by firms and/or special interest groups to promote their positions to politicians and/or committees and various entities responsible for recommending or approving legal or legislative actions.

'More ($$) to bribe the government' than you thought ... ?? From a business article over the weekend, Google just released figures that they paid their lobbying firm in Washington DC almost 1.5 million dollars in just the first quarter of this year, up from last year's first quarter of approx 1.35 million dollars. Consider if the 1.5mil is an 'average' quarter, then a firm like Google spends at least 6 million dollars annually to promote their special interests in just federal issues coming out of Washington. That's 6 million annually to go TALK to politicians to help them see the company's side of an issue facing 'some' federal legislation.

Imagine what corporations like AT&T, Verizon, the auto industry, energy related firms, the oil companies, food related industries... etc... pay each year just to lobbyists.

As part of his campaign platform, (Pres) Obama promised to reduce the effects of lobbying in Washington. Instead, it has increased substantially.

The funny part is considering that WE pay the inflated prices for company products and services that spend millions to get legislation that protects them from giving most folks a fair deal in their repective marketplace for various reasons ......

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