Latest Black Friday news

Black Friday is the hottest topic in the poker world at the moment

If you’re into online poker, you know that it’s a very, very profitable market. And no matter how profitable it is for you, the player, just imagine that it’s ten times more for the people that control and run the largest online poker sites in the world.

The United States holds a very strict set of laws in regards to online poker, in particular, and online gambling, in general, and there are lots of people who would like to at least bend these laws, making their profit increase exponentially. Some of these people are the owners of the largest online poker sites in the world, people who apparently were caught doing some very shady business in order to stay afloat. This Friday saw one of the largest operations conducted by the United States law enforcement agencies, which arrested eleven key players in the online poker world, and seized close to three billion dollars in money from Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, Absolute Poker and UB Poker. Full Black Friday story.

The whole situation seems to have its roots in an investigation that took several years, with the most notable breakthrough coming exactly one year ago, when an important figure in the money laundering operations conducted by the online poker sites was arrested in Las Vegas. Daniel Tzvetkoff faced up to 75 years in the American prisons, and faced with such a long term jail time he chose to collaborate with the authorities, and expose a nationwide fraud that involved some of the world’s largest, most famous online poker sites.

Right now the latest pokernews is that the online gambling kingpins that have already been arrested are Isai Scheinberg, Paul Tate (both from Poker Stars), Nelson Burtnick, Raymond Bitar (both from Full Tilt Poker), and Brent Beckley and Scott Tom (both from Absolute Poker). Arrest warrants have been issued for other important members, but as of yet they are outside of the United States.

The online poker rooms themselves aren’t doing so good, either. All of the sites involved in the action have been shut down, with the domain names being seized by the American authorities. The online poker software still works, but no players from the United States are accepted, so the rooms are emptier than ever. And chances are that they will remain this way, at least until online gambling laws are changed in the States, and a much friendlier environment is created.