Cashing out on PokerStars + other sites

dd_decker said:

Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn't accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won't be able to cash them, a lawyer for the company said.

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dd_decker said:

Nope, those aren't just stories, this was a big story for a brief period last year:

June 09, 2009
Over $34 million belonging to at least 27,000 online poker players has been frozen by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, according to statements released by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) and Associated Press.
The accounts are managed by Allied Systems Inc., and Account Services, which handle cash for popular online poker sites, including Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars. Though the money belongs to the poker players, it is held for them in accounts managed by the two service companies.
Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn't accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won't be able to cash them, a lawyer for the company said.

The Federal Government did freeze those accounts, but there was a big question as to the legality of their action. I guess nothing really came of it and the poker sites involved resumed business as usual, and reimbursed the affected players. By now, all players accounts have supposedly been retuned to normal status, but according to the previous post, maybe not all of them were....

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dmorris68 said:

And that is interesting, and questionably legal. As I mentioned, the UIGEA does not prohibit withdrawals to players, only transfers to the poker sites. Of course they may not have known at the time in which direction the money was flowing, only that it was owned by a poker site(s).

However it has been noted that certain DoJ officials and apparently state's AGs too take an overly broad interpretation of both the UIGEA and the Wire Act (which doesn't cover internet gaming at all) in order to bully gaming sites and their payment processors. No doubt this would never hold up in court, but who from Stars or Tilt, under the current situation, are going to take it to court. It's probably cheaper and easier for them to just write it off.

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dmorris68 said:

There were account seizures at some payment processors last year by the DoJ, but this is the first I've heard of someone not getting paid from it. By all accounts I recall, both Stars and FT immediately resent payments from other processors, often including an extra 10% for the inconvenience.

There have been no other seizures reported since.

It's also important to remember that UIGEA does not prohibit withdrawals from poker sites. It *only* blocks deposits, i.e. transfers to the poker sites. So there are no laws in effect when you withdraw money. Of course the potential snag is when the same payment processors that handle withdrawals are also used to handle deposits -- there is a very small opportunity that your withdrawn funds will be affected if the DoJ goes after those processors. But it's extremely rare, and nothing to be concerned about at this point. In fact after this last round of seizures, I wouldn't be surprised of the sites started separating their deposit processors from their withdrawal processors. I do know there was a flurry of activity around changing deposit processors right after.

People cash out daily from Stars and FT, often in very large sums. If there were any sort of frequent or recurring problems doing so, it would be obvious. Now the smaller, shadier sites... who knows. But I don't think you have anything to worry about from those two.

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