Poker Crackdown, Online Poker on Jeopardy

For many years, online poker sites have lived in a sort of shadowy legal , in most cases operating under the arm of foreign law — but easily reaching into the United states.
Now, the U.S. Justice Department said this Friday "enough is enough" and without warning shut down a the major poker sites, including  Full Tilt Poker. The DOJ accused eleven people of  fraud and of illegally operating gambling websites. The government also seized accounts run under the sites that held money stored by costumers.
The crackdown came after years of dispute between the sites and the U.S. government, which long held that online gambling is not allowed by the laws. But a game that involves skill, (poker) is not gambling.

Many sites flee the U.S after the law was approved. Others, like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, built huge businesses by catering to U.S. players from overseas. PokerStars headquarters is  in the Isle of Man, Full Tilt is regulated  in the U.K.’s Channel Islands and Absolute Poker is in Costa Rica.

The things seemed to work,  the sites were building a market that last year included 1.8 million people in the U.S. who played poker online.

The indictment last week alleged that the companies dodged the 2006 ban on electronic transfers related to gambling by working with 3rd parties to create fake websites for ghost companies to trick banks into thinking that it was not an gambling poker site.
Full Tilt said in a statement that it “is, and has always been committed to preserving the integrity of the game and abiding by the law.” Representatives for PokerStars and Full Tilt didn’t respond to requests for comment. Absolute Poker representatives could not be reached.
The only thing to do, by now, is moving to a safe and legal poker site...