Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet and Poker Stars Domains Seized by FBI

[The_Reaper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/te...y/16poker.html

Could have big implications to us all.

[The_Reaper]

Internet gambling sites owners charged with fraud | Reuters

[Shark]

twoplustwo forums going crazy about it.

Officially the end of online poker as we know it

[The_Reaper]

twoplustwo forums going crazy about it.

Officially the end of online poker as we know it

Nah, just the FBI lining their pockets before regulation in the US again.

[Fender]

Plenty of customers outside the US still surely, just get a new domain and carry on

[munk]

Withdrawals down for now as well presumably as a result of the domain seizure. Grr won't be able to check on my Take2 bonus wagering either.

Interesting though if you load up the client, tables are still almost as busy as usual, has a touch of the Titanic about it with the band playing on as the ship is sinking!

[wobbler]

Wow, this is major news. I had been piss arsing around trying to get a withdrawal out of these for at least two weeks and it hit my bank three days ago. Phew!

Depending on if your DNS has resolved or not you may see an FBI confiscated webpage on the main Full Tilt web page.

It is looking pretty shitty for anyone with funds in there.

[westv]

Why are these sites US based? Isn't the reason all the sportsbooks are offshore partly to prevent this sort of thing happening?:

[The_Reaper]

Why are these sites US based? Isn't the reason all the sportsbooks are offshore partly to prevent this sort of thing happening?:

Dont no the ins and outs, but they are not US based, but by allowing US players they are pissing the US government off because they arent getting a piece of the action.

[munk]

It is looking pretty shitty for anyone with funds in there.

I think it's too early to say, theoretically any non-US players should be fine you would think, if they opt to not pay out any non-US players full stop then that would definitely be the death nell for them, can't see many of those players ever going back again.

Apparently they've had 75 bank accounts frozen between the 3 sites I think I read(?), so whether or not all their money was frozen or whether they had it spread out across many more accounts than that, who knows. If they did then I suppose from a business point of view the best thing to try and do is carry on as normally as possible for non-US players (incidentally pokerstars apparently have blocked US players from playing at tables now, FTP they are still allowed at the moment but who knows how long that will last).

I also read that some people were actually still able to process withdrawals instantly earlier today after this hit the fan, though whether or not that was just some fluke or not just before the sites were taken down fully I don't know.

Is strange that the FTP client is still allowing you to play though, I would have thought it wouldn't be possible without the main primary domain being online regardless of how many thousands of backend servers they have in their 'farm'.

Anyone actually tried withdrawing this evening? Do you have to visit the main FTP domain to process the withdrawal or is it all done within the client?

When I try to withdraw now it complains about the main domain not being available and to contact CS, but I don't know if that's because I have to do extra stuff because it's my first withdrawal or not - I don't think I ever made a withdrawal at FTP so not sure what the procedure is (I have $150 in there right now so not too bad, drop in the ocean compared to Getwin, still PITA though).

EDIT: just noticed now, when I connect to FTP in the client it actually connects to an Irish IP address (which is kind of odd because it doesn't first try and connect to ftp.com which you might have thought it would do even if it was just to get a propogated / backend address). It looks like the Irish address is hard wired into the client, so whether every single client is the same and everyone (including US players) connect to the backend servers in Ireland or whether the client differs depending on what country you're in... who knows.