Feds confiscate my money
Having rid the world of terrorism, the Obama Justice Department goes after online poker:
Prosecutors are seeking to immediately shut down the sites and to eventually send the executives to jail and to recover $3 billion from the companies. By Friday afternoon Full Tilt Pokers site displayed a message explaining that this domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.
Recover? That’s an interesting use of the word recover.
But it’s OK to have illegal poker games in the white house.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Well, it may get hard to find a game. I don’t recommend a card room, either. Year before last we had an old coot shoot up the one card room in my little burg. He was an OK guy, according to witnesses, but one day he pulled out a 1911 and just emptied the magazine at players. No warnings.
Isn’t there an Indian casino near you?
April 17th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Recover? I guess they think it’s their money!
April 17th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
ATL,
They have good reason to think it’s their money as one of the past international bankers admitted:
“Give me control over a nations currency, and I care not who makes its laws.–Baron M.A. Rothschild
That arrangement was made with the advent of the Federal Reserve (which is neither)–the greatest “Ponzi Scheme” going.
The Federal Gov’t has NO “delegated powers” related to gambling (10th Amendment). The States retain that power, one which should only be invoked by legislation for criminal actions during or resulting from gambling.
April 17th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Wow, what idiotic laws. Couldn’t they have just tried to tax that money instead? The Feds get your $3billion now, but will never get any more in the future. I’d rather have say 10% of $3billion from now until forever instead of $3billion now? Bring the gambling operations into an open and regulated environment. In 10 years you get your $3billion, and every year after another 10%.
Another industry crushed by stupid regulations.
April 17th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
They told me that if I voted for McCain, we’d have a moralistic prude in the White House and they were right.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
I wonder how long it will be before they try to “recover” all the money we keep in our bank accounts.
April 17th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
I admit it would be fun to see Phil Hellmuth in a Wookie suit.
(Full Tilt Wookie.)
April 17th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
But it’s all for your protection! Those evil websites were using Jedi mind tricks forcing you to play! It was all a big Zionist plot to steal your soul! All hail Obama for saving us!
April 17th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
They took down PokerStars too. 🙁
April 17th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Not that I have a concern in this (don’t gamble, can’t afford to anyway), but I understood the law as blocking the sites; i.e. there is no law forbidding on-line gambling (players), just the operation of a site (house).
SO…VPN or off-shore proxy to play ? (I thought most of the sites were off-shore anyway.
(I heard it on the radio, so it must be true 🙂 )
April 17th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
They try and “recover” anything in my bank accounts, and they’ll get to “recover” some lead and copper.
April 17th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Funny how the FBI can shut down a Domain Name on the basis of an Arrest Warrant. Innocent until Proven Guilty, right? Isn’t there Something about a 5th, 6th and 7th Amendment that precludes Unlawful Searches and Seizures, not to mention “the right to a Speedy and Public Trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…” And since these companies were not even in the U.S., but Off Shore, don’t some Federales seem to have reached beyond their Jurisdiction? Where’s the Jury Pool coming from, the Bahamas? I’m looking forward to this case.
April 17th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
I never understood the logic of gambling. Poker or stock market.. Though with poker you have better odds and you do get to see where your money is going….
April 17th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
My comment is awaiting moderation…. I mean censorship…
April 17th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
First they came for the Gamblers, but I was not a gambler…
This whole Administration is a bunch of illegal thugs, from every kind of unelected Czaraucrats, to Government Motors, to the paid-contributor Union thugs, to their paid-off henchmen on Wall Street.
April 17th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
# armed_partisan Says:
April 17th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
I wonder how long it will be before they try to recover all the money we keep in our bank accounts.
That would be on the schedule for 2013, say no later than April.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
I’ve been in freakout mode since Friday as I have about $30k sitting on FT right now 😮 They keep saying the money is safe and players will receive their funds, but I’m still feeling real crummy until I get it… Lesson learned I guess.
On the plus side, I do feel safer from the terrorists.
April 18th, 2011 at 2:15 am
Yet another reason to register your domain name with a foreign entity. I suggest somewhere in Sweden. The Pirate Party there makes this sort of thing hard for the Swedes to do.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:54 am
Here’s the thing. It’s NOT so much about poker as it IS about two fondly-held wishes of Dear Leader:
1. Taxing anything and everything; and
2. Controlling the internet.
This is another camel’s nose with respect to the incremental campaign to assert federal control over what people do and say on the internet.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:57 am
bwm, I feel your unease. Since I do not play the really big cash games, I only keep a couple $K on FTP at any time, but still it’s disconcerting.
April 18th, 2011 at 11:19 am
I feel safer now.
April 18th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Well, the interesting coincidence is that this move comes just as DC opens online gambling. Nice to have the Feds shut down your competition to give you a leg up.
April 18th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
On the “poker games in the White House”, well – it’s not even hinted at in that quote that the games were for money. (That source talks about games in Chicago for money, yes.)
Looking at the confusingly-written DC gambling laws, it’s not even clear that an ad-hoc for-money poker game would be illegal, though it might be.
Poker for chips or points with no money changing hands at any point would be perfectly legal.
(And I’m not going to call Obama a hypocrite over the DOJ’s actions, since the laws against internet gambling pre-date him, and would certainly seem to be, if not wise, still perfectly Constitutional under the Commerce Clause.)