Pretty much a must-read for anyone that has “uncleared” UMW funds:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=27876637&postcount=22

Some excerpts from Skallagrim:

The main distinction between players in this UMW/Quicktender/Changestream (UMW for short) and the FTP/Cereus case is that in the UMW situation players have the ability to identify a specific seized bank account with funds in it that were clearly and specifically directed to them. If the reported information is correct, the total seized should equal the amount of “uncleared” transfers reported by UMW. This allows the UMW claimants to easily argue that they are more than “unsecured creditors” – UMW claimants can say that the money seized is not merely “UMW money and they owe me money”; they can claim that the money was money UMW had already credited to me and was merely in transit to me. IOW, it is not money owed to me (unsecured creditor) it is money already “mine.”


But this only gets you over the “identify the specific property claimed” and “identify the claimant and state the claimant’s interest in the property” parts of what is required to file a claim. It does not by any means guarantee a victory in court that leads to the government having to give you the money.


Ultimate victory depends on defeating the government’s claim that the money is forfeitable “proceeds of illegal activity.”

And another:

To explain it by way of a not perfect but more familiar analogy, say you were playing poker in an underground card room in NY. In NY the law is also clear that the player is not subject to prosecution, only the room operator is breaking the law. The room is raided and all money found seized. Money on the table, money in the cage – that is clearly money subject to forfeiture. Money in your wallet you never even put on the table is clearly money not subject to forfeiture. Money in a sealed envelope with your name on it held by the room’s doorman for you to pick up on your way out – that is the kind of question you are facing here ….


And the answer is not certain. Where the answer is not certain, sometimes the best move is to litigate to get an answer. Sometimes not.

Just when we thought the case turned cold, more info comes up!

Unfortunately, I’m a bit late to this informing you guys.  I just got back home from participating in a clinical study for childhood cancer survivors at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN…but here we go, some interesting stuff below!

On to the news, 2+2′er “BigOlTatties” broke this news and PM’d me the details.  Turns out he found something very interesting on forfeiture.gov.  Here’s the screen shot from forfeiture.gov, since they tend to remove these listings fairly quickly:

This shows the forfeiture notice of funds seized in the amount of $1,820,008.93 from a Deutsche Bank account held in the name of ABN AMRO Bank NV.  You might recall that I was the first to draw the link to “uncleared” funds being snagged by the United States Secret Service in this post and follow up with more detail here of my suspicions.

Also, here’s a screen shot from justia.com showing the court case, office, case number, etc:

BigOlTatties was able to confirm these details for me through the link to the forfeiture.gov page and then further help by 2+2′er Diamond_Flush uploading/posting these government case documents on google docs:

US vs 1.8mil seized from DBT Case 2:11-cv- This document contains information about the complaint, the nature and basis for the seizure as well as some facts supporting their action (violations of laws, jurisdiction, naming the bank account as the defendent).

Exhibit A, Declaration by Agent Grant Wagner – This document is a bit more interesting.  It details how the agents of the United States Secret Service Southwest Florida Financial Crimes Strike Force (USSSSWFFCSF …for short… lol no, I’m not making that up) went about their investigation.  In this document it talks about some cardrunners pros receiving some big amounts from Quicktender.  It appears as part of their case, the secret service sorted the data by who received the various wires between from chargestream and then summed up the amounts to see who got some of the biggest cumulative withdrawals and then went to work on identifying who is who to build their case.  It just so happened that 2 of the 3 players they cited in this document were cardrunners pros (sick brag?).  They did not give any names but they did use sources such as linkedin.com to identify and confirm that these players in question were professional poker players and receiving funds from Chargestream, aka UMW/QT.  According to the document there were 13,077 transactions in and out of the Chargestream accounts totaling just under $53 million (about $23.7 mil incoming and $29.2 mil outgoing) .

The agents also googled to find various sources on online gambling web forums talking about ways to process payments in and out of some of the various poker and gambling sites.  Quicktender came up and there were also reportedly open online gambling investigations by the USSSSWFFCSF looking into BayDonHill PLC, a name that I hadn’t heard of until this document, which was linked in a forum post by a user saying that withdraws from Quicktender.com might show up under that name or Chargestream.  This also potentially confirms other suspicions I had about the nature of John Briggs and Paul Templeman’s businesses.  They developed the abstraction of “UseMyWallet” and the implementation of “Quicktender” for the specific reason of planning head in case they get nailed by the feds eventually. As I mentioned in that post, this is not their first rodeo.

The document also went on to say that they did conduct interviews with local online poker players.  I’m guessing this is to make the case appear to be somewhat relevant to them geographically (they have a section noting the Venue in the Middle District of Florida where they are based).  According to the document, about $145k of the $23.7 million was received by users in their area.

This is just speculation, but when I read about the agents going to houses and interviewing people, I did remember a posting in the Poker Legislation forum on 2+2 that described a visit by the Secret Service.  It’s unclear if this poster is one of the people interviewed as part of this investigation, but certainly it’s not one of the interviews that were named by date as this post was made in February and the document mentions interviews in April.  It was either part of this investigation or the Secret Service has some other ongoing efforts.

Another interesting tidbit, to relate this case back to some previous ones, the Exhibit A document says the following: “In February 2010, the USSS arrested a subject in the Middle District of Florida for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business…”  That, my friends, would be Michael Olaf Schuett who according to the linked article was mailing 150 parcels a week through FedEx and where they opened many of the parcels to find checks and reported it to the government.  Other suspicions came from bank employees where he was wiring in and out millions.  As stated by the Exhibit A document, after learning about how much bank wiring was going on, the USSS started a Federal Investigation which eventually lead to this case.

I’d like to keep digging into some of this stuff but for now it’s bed time.  Hopefully more up this weekend!

It’s been nice to get back to my roots a little bit.  As some of you know, before becoming a poker pro I was a web development consultant for about 5 years.  Since starting poker seriously, I programmed less and grinded poker more.  Obviously with Black Friday, the grinding has…”ground” itself down to a much slower pace.

For StolenBankrolls.com, I outsourced most of the development to a guy I’ve had pretty good results from with a previous project.  I wanted to do the site in Ruby on Rails 3 and given that I didn’t have any professional experience at this technology, it provided a good opportunity for me to learn something new and feel productive.  I wanted my developer to focus his expertise on the bulk of the work, but I also wanted to add some of my own personal touch…Enter the interactive map!

The past few days I’ve been working on making the site look a little nicer and make the navigation a little better.  I’ve added the green navigation bar plus a new totals page that shows where some of the biggest bankrolls have been submitted (by state for the US and by country for the rest of the world).  Check it out, I hope you like it:  StolenBankrolls.com/totals

I’ll be on the QuadJacks radio program tonight at 7pm central time talking about the FTP hearing tomorrow and StolenBankrolls.com.

After the launch of StolenBankrolls.com, we had a lot of intrigue, interest, and questions.  Many people have expressed concerns for the security and the data we are collecting.

From the beginning of the project, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t get any data from anyone that could compromise their security.  I simply do not want the headaches of being responsible for that…plus for our purposes, it’s simply unneeded.  I want everyone to feel comfortable with the site.  We started off by collecting less sensitive data than some other sites that we’ve been compared to… the so called “poker petitions.”  We are not a petition and don’t aim to be.  We don’t want anyone to feel like any data of theirs is in trouble.

As a result, we’ve decided to remove the city field all together, so no one can even enter it.  We also changed the “last name” field to simply be the first letter of your last name.  Anyone who currently entered data that is no longer being collected doesn’t have to worry either.  We are clearing all the cities from our database as well as the last names, except for the first letter.

I hope this will encourage people to be more comfortable and help us spread the word.  I think our goal to get the word out to more major media outlets and put a more personal touch on this situation is doable, but we need everyone’s help and support.

Thanks to everyone who has signed up and tweeted about us, mentioned us on facebook, or any poker forums.

Aaron / WiltOnTilt

So in light of all the recent events with Black Friday, Blue Monday, and various unnamed government seizures and poor choices by poker sites, I’ve decided to launch StolenBankrolls.com, which is a division of PlusEVPoker.com. In short, StolenBankrolls.com is a way for everyone to submit their data for their bankrolls that are currently locked up as a result of either government seizures (IE FTP/UB/QuickTender) or websites going under because of bad business practices (Eurolinx, Tusk, etc).

The purpose of this site is to help build awareness. I would like everyone to submit their details (don’t worry, we are only collecting the most basic info, and we want no sensitive personal information, and we are not giving out your info) so we can keep people informed about any news gathered as well as give people the opportunity to stay up to date with happenings here at PlusEVPoker.com.

Feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have, check out the info on the site: http://www.StolenBankrolls.com and check out the FAQ: http://www.plusevpoker.com/stolen-bankrolls-faq

I just received this email from QuickTender:

Dear Aaron Wilt,


We are writing to confirm the process to enable you to withdraw your remaining ‘available’ QuickTender USD balance.

As previously advised in order for customers to have their balances refunded, they will need to have a Euro currency bank account as we can no longer make any payments into a USD denominated account. We urge you to obtain a EURO denominated bank account in order to receive your funds.

From the 1st July and until the 15th August you will be able to log into the QuickTender site at www.quicktender.com and to request a withdrawal using the ‘Contact Us’ section. Before selecting contact us, you should first login as this ensures your account name and registered email is copied and also the page is now secure (if you select contact us before logging in the page, neither your account information is copied, or the page is secure via HTTPS Socket Level Security).

Once logged into your QuickTender account, you will be able to review your balance and obtain a statement of the previous transactions prior to requesting a withdrawal. There will be no way to transfer funds to previously QuickTender accepting merchants.

In this contact us section, you should select ‘Withdrawing Funds from your account’ from the drop down subject menu and in the space below, immediately provide with your EURO bank account details (clearly including any intermediatory bank details if necessary) in the following format:


Bank Account Name (this must match the family name that your QuickTender account is registered in)
Bank Name
Bank Address
Bank Identification Code (BIC also known as Swift Code)
Bank Account Number / International Bank Account Number (IBAN)


Please note we will not send any funds that claim to be destined for a EURO account to a 9 digit Fedwire/ABA routing number. If you obtain a EURO account from a USA based bank they will be able to provide you with the BIC/Swift Code and /or an International Bank Account Number (IBAN).


As previously mentioned, withdrawals can only be made to EURO bank accounts and will only be sent in the name of the registered QuickTender account holder. We cannot support 3rd party withdrawals.


To be clear, your withdrawal will be processed from your USD QuickTender account and QuickTender will convert it to the EURO equivalent amount based on the prevailing exchange rate.


Once we have successfully processed your withdrawal, we will advise you by email of the EURO amount and the date you should expect to receive it. Only funds sent to a EURO bank account are fully protected. We will not be held liable for any funds that are not received due to them not being sent to a EURO bank account in the name of the QuickTender account holder.


If you want your funds you need to act quickly to open a EURO denominated bank account and request a withdrawal to it prior to the 15th August 2011.


We are deeply sorry that this is the only means of ensuring you receive your QuickTender funds as part of us ceasing our service, but we want to ensure you receive them rather than the USA authorities.


QuickTender Team

Looks promising, we should all proceed to get these Euro accounts set up ASAP.

Another article by Tim Lemke at the Odenton Patch:

http://odenton.patch.com/articles/county-gambling-seizure-draws-ire-of-poker-players

“Illegal gambling proceeds are forfeited to the government,” spokeswoman Vickie E. LeDuc said. “Anyone who believes that an Internet gambling business owes them money can try to collect from the Internet gambling business. The government is not going to give the money to gamblers.”

I have some things I’ve learned about the different players in this drama recently but they were a bit too random to go into any of the other posts, so I thought I’d make a generic background info entry.

First, UseMyWallet.

Some of this info is a bit obvious when you think about it, but I figure it’s worth spelling out because with all of the distractions, it’s sometimes easy to miss things.

The whole idea behind UseMyWallet is one of abstraction.  This type of idea is very common in the software development world.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, the idea of abstraction is basically that you can make generic frameworks that know how to communicate with each other through an interface, but they don’t get bogged down in each other’s nitty gritty details.

UseMyWallet is essentially the abstract idea of an e-wallet.  It’s the interface by which a pokers site agrees to talk to the actual payment processor.  In this most recent case, the implementation I’ve been talking about is quicktender.com.  The purpose of setting the site up this way is to handle the situation that has occurred most recently – pressure/seizures by the U.S. Government.  Let me explain:

John Briggs is the owner of Chargestream LTD, QuickTender, UseMyWallet, Psi-Pay, EcoCard, and a number of other companies involved in payment processing.  He also used to work for Neteller.com.  This is not his first rodeo.  He knows this business inside and out.  His partner in Chargestream, and I’m assuming several other businesses, is Paul Templeman – former Neteller.com CEO.

With UseMyWallet, Briggs has designed his business so he inks a deal with the poker sites so that they support UseMyWallet.  The underlying implementation of that UseMyWallet interface is/was QuickTender.com.  When (not if) the U.S. Government comes at his implementation he can simply spin out another implementation using the same protocols (perhaps “fast-tender”) and be back up and running without any heavy changes to the poker sites.  In other words, the poker sites know how to talk to this generic “UseMyWallet” interface which hides the layer underneath it, QuickTender.com (or “Fast-Tender”), so that when QuickTender is gone, he can just turn on another implementation and be back up and running.

Given the email I detailed in the last post, I believe this is what could be happening right now.  I suspect they are making slight implementation changes to handle Euros instead of USD, get different bank accounts set up, and be ready to spin out another payment processor that the poker sites can talk to via the UseMyWallet interface.

The whole reason things would be set up this way is because Briggs probably realizes that seizures are inevitable. I would assume he wants to be back up and running ASAP and doesn’t want to be held hostage to delays by their own developers coming up with new protocols and new code as well as avoiding delays from the poker site developers learning a new API (Application Programming Interface).  The UseMyWallet is the generic API.

Now, I’d like to detail a bit more about what I’ve learned from the other side of the drama… The Maryland ICE/HSI.

The more people I talk to, the more it’s becoming clear that the Maryland ICE/HSI has very little sympathy for the plight of the players.  The fact that we have millions of dollars either in limbo, in the government’s pockets, or in the pockets disappearing payment processors is of little concern to them.  In fact, their viewpoint is that us playing poker is illegal and they are teaching us a lesson.  From reading various poker forums, people have taken their frustrations out by sending nasty emails to some of the government officials.   I begged and pleaded people on the 2+2 forums to be as nice and understanding as possible when dealing with any of these government figures.  Apparently, my pleas fell on deaf ears.  I am worried that if this continues, they may simply cut us all off completely.  Even if they have no sympathy for us, we still need their help.  Please keep a cool head with these people.  Even though we may disagree with them, they are doing their job and they think they are doing the right things.

Also, it is fairly common knowledge that the ACH transactions they seized with the 2 Linwood accounts were very small, under $2,000 USD per transaction.  The ACH transfers were capped at $2,000 as this was the standard with any gaming operator in the industry for ACH.  The real money was in those 2 Chargestream accounts in the Netherlands, as I had expected and those funds will be liquidated by Briggs and company well before the U.S. government gets there.  At this point, I’m glad that’s the case and I hope Briggs gets the money.  If the government is trying to teach us a lesson then I don’t have much hope for getting any money from them.  This has been somewhat confirmed by my conversation with Jim Eastman a few posts back, where it was his opinion that the money taken from the Secret Service and his speculation that any money seized by the Maryland HSI would not be returned to the players.

I only hope this is not the case for the DOJ in New York.

A really bizarre thing happened yesterday afternoon when I woke up (sick brag ldo).

By now it’s fairly old news, but I woke up to an email from QuickTender in my inbox.  Here’s the copy/paste:

Dear Aaron Wilt

We are writing to give you an update on the status of your QuickTender account balance.

Contrary to some speculation in the forums, certain funds of QuickTender have indeed been subject to a seizure order by the US authorities. We hope to advise those affected in the near future on the status of these funds. The funds were held with our processor, ChargeStream Ltdand the action is a matter that is in the public domain.

Whilst not all of our funds are affected, a significant amount has been. QuickTender is a reputable organisation, and we wish to ensure so far as we can that our account holders do not lose their funds in our care.

We are looking at how we can release funds to our account holders as soon as possible, however because of current restrictions we are unable to transmit any funds in USD.

In order for customers to have their balances refunded, at present they will need to have a currency account in Euros as we currently cannot make any payments into any USD denominated accounts. If you do not have an account in Euros we would urge you to obtain one in order to receive your funds.

At the end of this week QuickTender aims to advise further on enabling withdrawal of funds from your QuickTender Account.

Please bear with us in these difficult times as we endeavour to resolve the situation despite the severe limitations we face.

QuickTender Support TEam

Maybe I’m just being an ego maniac, but I’m pretty sure that my work investigating them was at least part of what spawned this email.  Look at this part:

“Contrary to some speculation in the forums, certain funds of QuickTender have indeed been subject to a seizure order by the US authorities.”

The language used in this quote is quite interesting and misleading.  I usually like to give people the benefit of doubt, but in times like these I have to be skeptical of everyone. It appears they may be trying to disprove or down play what I was the first to report, which was Maryland US Attorney Richard Kay telling me that the paperwork for the warrants has begun, but it would be 4-6 months before the US government actually seizes the 2 accounts in the Netherlands.  As a result of this delay, there would likely be no money left in the account by the time the US authorities got there which meant the scenario was likely that quicktender would withdraw all the money and fade away.

In reality, the money that was seized was done so by the U.S. Secret Service as I also reported from my conversation with Jim Eastman. The U.S. Secret Service intercepted money that was in transit to the players through the correspondent bank in NYC***.  It appears to me quicktender is trying to confuse you through their tricky language.  They try to say “yes, we did have money seized” (which is true, and I’ve reported as such) however I believe they are may be trying to use this to discredit what I’ve also previously reported and confirmed again today: The Maryland ICE/HSI does not currently have control over quicktender bank accounts in the Netherlands.  This mess is very confusing, so don’t be fooled.

***I believe, but I cannot confirm, their intermediary bank is a  Deutsche Bank in NYC ABA#021001033.  I believe it’s this bank as it’s listed as the sender DBTCO AMERICAS NYC on my bank wires received from quicktender.com

It’s not all bad news though.  In fact I think it’s a good sign we’ve heard anything from quicktender.  This part is especially hopeful:

We are looking at how we can release funds to our account holders as soon as possible, however because of current restrictions we are unable to transmit any funds in USD.

In order for customers to have their balances refunded, at present they will need to have a currency account in Euros as we currently cannot make any payments into any USD denominated accounts. If you do not have an account in Euros we would urge you to obtain one in order to receive your funds.

I think it makes perfect sense that they cannot send money in USD.  As I understand it, any foreign transfers in USD coming into the country must pass through the Federal Reserve bank, which would make it very easy to seize that money.  Sending the money in Euros might allow for an easier transfer.

At the end of this week QuickTender aims to advise further on enabling withdrawal of funds from your QuickTender Account.

Please bear with us in these difficult times as we endeavour to resolve the situation despite the severe limitations we face.

QuickTender Support TEam

I hope this is true, I will certainly be awaiting any news.  Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised.

Crazy times these are.  My main focus for the past couple weeks has been trying to get to the bottom of this mystery surrounding the “Blue Monday” seizures.  Unfortunately, it seems like every time I get on a roll there is a diaper to be changed, a doctor’s appointment to go to, or my wife having surgery to repair her wrist.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 30 years on this earth is that nothing is ever easy or smooth.

The more I dig into this mess, the more ridiculous things get.

On Friday I called a myriad of people and left messages trying to get more information about what is going on with our UseMyWallet/QuickTender funds.  There have been so many different stories and rumors it’s been hard to distinguish fact from fiction.  I think the picture is getting more clear.

One of the people I called and left a message with was Mr. Jim Eastman of the United States Secret Service out of the Fort Myers office.  Mr. Eastman was kind enough to return my call today and I had a conversation with him that greatly clarified some of the recent rumblings about the Secret Service involvement in this.  I appreciate Mr. Eastman’s time and willingness to discuss these things with me.  For clarity I’m going to bullet point the primary topics we talked about:

• -The US Secret Service and Maryland ICE/HSI had 2 separate investigations going simultaneously.
• -The 2 different government agencies were not sharing information and were not aware of each other’s investigation.***
• -Both investigations zeroed in on money controlled at one point by Chargestream LTD (the accounts in Holland/Netherlands)
• -The Secret Service only dealt with money as it was going through the correspondent bank in NYC.  Their investigation had nothing to do with seizing overseas bank accounts, only money that was in transit.
• -When asked if he had an opinion about whether or not we could get our money from a US Government seized bank account, Mr. Eastman’s opinion was they will not give it back to the players.
• -Mr. Eastman said he is not a lawyer, but it is his understanding that their efforts are based on the 2006 UIGEA legislation.
• -It was Mr. Eastman’s understanding that if we had money that was with Chargestream (UMW/QT) that was not in transit, then it was part of the Maryland ICE/HSI investigation and if they have seized those accounts, our money is likely there.

***I’m told by another confidential source the lack of information sharing is also true about the “Blue Monday” Maryland efforts vs. the “Black Friday” SDNY efforts.  Apparently “Blue Monday” was going to make a much bigger splash but the SDNY office beat them to the punch a bit and information throughout the investigations were not shared between agencies.

So here are a couple things you should take note of.  First, if you had money in transit to the United States from your quicktender.com account, there’s a chance that the Secret Service has your money locked up.  Second, for those of us who have money just sitting in our accounts on quicktender.com (ie, NOT being wired to our personal bank accounts), the Secret Service has no access or control over that money.

After learning this, I felt more confident about what I had originally thought after reading the Linwood Affidavit I linked to several entries ago, which is that the Maryland Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has our money seized in these bank accounts in the Netherlands.  Unfortunately, as I would find out minutes later, it’s not that simple.

I called up Maryland US Attorney Richard Kay.  I’m told from my sources that Richard Kay is an extremely intelligent guy who gets things done, and he is really behind “Blue Monday,” despite Special Agent Lisa Ward’s name on the Affidavit.  I had been calling Mr. Kay for about a week now, trying to reach him and I finally go through today.

I introduced myself to Mr. Kay and said I had recently talked to Mr. Jim Eastman of the US Secret Service about their investigation and I was trying to piece this puzzle together.  I explained that based on the investigation that I’ve done, I think that the Maryland ICE/HSI has control over some bank accounts with poker player funds in them, including my $26,000.  I explained that I have 2 bank wire receipts (one from April, one from May) showing withdraws from account 0243058780 in the Netherlands that the Linwood Affidavit says was seized.

At this point, US Attorney Kay corrected me and said these accounts have not yet been seized, only that the paperwork for seizure warrants have been submitted and they have no results yet on the status of that paperwork.  I was stunned.  I asked further questions and tried to take notes, but as best as I understand it (I might have some details slightly wrong here) this is how it works:

1. An investigation is conducted and evidence being gathered

2. Paperwork gets filed to the State Department to check and see what type of foreign treaties exist with the country in question

3. Assuming the proper treaties, the paperwork is then translated and filed with the foreign country (in this case, Netherlands) asking for a Netherlands court to honor those treaties

4. Assuming treaties are honored, a petition is filed and the courts seize the bank accounts.

Mr. Kay explained that this entire process takes 4-6 months to complete.  Until the process is complete, the accounts are not actually locked and seized, so Chargestream LTD has access to these accounts.  You can guess what happens next.  I was then told “the chance of any money being left in those accounts by the time we get to them is so close to zero I’d call it zero”

Mr. Kay also explained that he’s gone through this process many times before and that’s how it works out…but they still do it anyway.  My natural reaction was to want to ask why the heck they do this then, but I bit my tongue.

Mr. Kay mentioned that 1 week before their warrants were filed, the Secret Service snagged some of the money coming into the country via those banks in NYC.

Given that it was becoming more clear that his office doesn’t have the money since the accounts aren’t actually locked up yet, I explained to him that I had done some research on UMW/QT/Chargestream and I had found two primary shareholders: John Briggs and Paul Templeman.  Mr Kay was familiar with Briggs but didn’t give any specific details on him.  I explained that we tracked down Templeman’s house in the UK and I had Briggs email and skype addresses but I couldn’t get a hold of either of them.  I asked if he or his office could or would help us in any way if we could track these guys down, and he said if we could find them then let him know and he would see what sort of extradition options were in place.

In general, Mr. Kay seemed plenty professional and reasonable, but not very compassionate.  He mentioned at least once about online gambling being illegal, but I had kept him so long already I didn’t want to try to get into a legal debate with a US Attorney, especially given I’m just a layman myself, however as best as I understand the Safe Port Act of 2006 (and subsequently the UIGEA) this states:

‘‘§ 5363. Prohibition on acceptance of any financial

instrument for unlawful Internet gambling

‘‘No person engaged in the business of betting or wagering

may knowingly accept, in connection with the participation of

another person in unlawful Internet gambling—

‘‘(1) credit, or the proceeds of credit, extended to or on

behalf of such other person (including credit extended through

the use of a credit card);

‘‘(2) an electronic fund transfer, or funds transmitted by

or through a money transmitting business, or the proceeds

of an electronic fund transfer or money transmitting service,

from or on behalf of such other person;

‘‘(3) any check, draft, or similar instrument which is drawn

by or on behalf of such other person and is drawn on or

payable at or through any financial institution; or

‘‘(4) the proceeds of any other form of financial transaction,

as the Secretary and the Board of Governors of the Federal

Reserve System may jointly prescribe by regulation, which

involves a financial institution as a payor or financial intermediary on behalf of or for the benefit of such other person

which as I understand it, says that it’s illegal for “person engaged in the business of betting or wagering” (ex. poker site) cannot accept deposits from players.  It does not prohibit people from getting their money from poker sites.

Additionally, if you look at the American Bankers Association website it lists the UIGEA compliance regulations where it specifically states:

The final rule requires a strengthened screening process at the time of account opening to deny commercial entities that may be acting as Internet casinos access to the payments system. It also requires that policies and procedures be implemented to prevent all debit and credit card payments to Internet casinos. It does not require that checks, ACH payments, or wire transactions related to Internet gambling be monitored or blocked.

Additionally, the UIGEA does not define what illegal gambling is.  It relies on other legislation (such as state or other federal laws) to define illegal gambling.  Some states, such as Washington state, have done this.  There is no other federal law that I am aware of except the Wire Act, however the U.S. Fith Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Wire Act only applies to sports betting, however the Department of Justice apparently disagrees.

Yet still, Mr. Eastman directly and Mr. Kay indirectly referenced online poker being illegal (UIGEA) and at least the Secret Service thinks it’s a good idea to snag bank wires going to players.

As for the next steps, I think it’s time to find out where the hell Briggs and Templeman are and find out where our money is.

I’ll be on the QuadJacks radio program tonight talking about this stuff as well.