PokerStars And Full Tilt Refund Player Bankrolls
April 21, 2011 4:25 pmIn the first piece of good news since the US government shut down the three biggest online poker sites in the country last week, Federal prosecutors have now agreed to allow two of the companies to return their players’ bankrolls.
Consequently, the poker rooms will temporarily be permitted to access their seized pokerstars.com and fulltiltpoker.com domain names so as to return their funds to U.S. players. In return, the poker rooms have agreed not to allow US players to play for real-money on their sites.
Click here for the poker rooms still accepting players from the USA.
As US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara explains:
“No individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained, and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to reimburse any player’s deposited funds.”
“In fact, this office expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players,” said Bharara.
This latest news was welcome relief for the thousands of American online poker players who had been unable to withdraw the money they held in their online accounts in the wake of the FBI indictments.
Despite the poker rooms assuring their customers that all the money was safe, many players were still on tenterhooks and left wondering whether they would have to wait months or longer to be reunited with their cash again.
After the agreement was struck between the poker rooms and the Justice department, PokerStars was quick to issue a statement which read:
“Returning US players’ funds is a top priority for PokerStars and the company can now start the process of returning money to its former US customers.”
However, despite the same offer being made by the Justice department to Absolute Poker, their has so far been no agreement made even as Absolute Poker continues to offer real cash games to Americans. Therefore, the players’ funds held at Absolute Poker and Ultimatebet are presently facing a more uncertain future as these poker rooms continue to put themselves at opposition to the Department Of Justice.