Seized! Gov Yanks $30M From Poker Players

The tremors were reported earlier.  Now the earthquake has arrived. The US government has taken control of over $30 million in poker player money by freezing payment processors like echeck.

The bare bones of what is happening here is the Department of Justice has now decided to take action against what it maintains is illegal online gambling. Poker Players Alliance maintains online sports betting is illegal for US citizens. Who is right is the billion dollar question.

Congress originally passed a bill that indicated it was illegal for U.S. banks to process gambling funds. The idea was to keep gamblers from winning money thus bringing an end to gambling.  Instead echecks took hold and poker players were covertly sent money through e-deposits.

Whether or not online gambling is illegal, the money has been seized and US players will not be playing anymore.

As the original legislation was written, I don’t think it is/was illegal. If they wanted to ban online gambling, then they would have expressly written that into the letter of the law. Of course, instead of writing something that was commonsensical in plain black and white, they wrote a long winded bill that only stated one clear thing – US banks couldn’t process gambling money. That doesn’t mean that poker players couldn’t still play for money.

If they wanted to say poker players couldn’t play cards, why not just say it. Why not write a bill called:

NO ONLINE GAMBLING!!!

This now leaves us where we’re at and another 2 years of the law coming to a slow answer.  After Congress gets through with another all important Congressional hearing on College Football playoffs and steroids in MLB, maybe we’ll get treated to another media frenzy at Capitol Hill with poker taking center stage.

sxc