Poker Forum

With all the corporate taxing dodging in the news and the wealthy not paying their fair share I wonder what tax bracket we should put Stars and Tilt in? Are they even paying taxes at all? And to whom? I would guess they pay ZERO TAXES here in the USA with no offices on land and probably pay more in bribes to civic officials/BANK OFFICIALS in the caymans or costa rica or wherever than pay taxes to that federal government. Both tilt and stars make MILLIONS of dollars a day in revenue so this could be a great source of tax dollars for them to use in the states instead of having the GOP try and cut social services to the bone and tax the middle class and seniors while giving themselves further tax breaks.

good use of analogies! I just want my "job" back!

Love this..."Go after the people responsible for empty houses, not full houses."

Full Tilt doesnt have its domain name back, I just tried to go to fulltilt.com and still get that government page. I hope we get some kind of answer when our money will be released. I know it wont be fast, but wish we had a time table knowing how slow the government is, I hope its not years.

Actually OP, the DOJ/Feds etc can just seize all of the local assets of the poker websites under RICO (without ever finding anyone guilty of anything)... just refer to previous indictments of Milken and Drexel etc when Giuliani was the FDA... if they are RICO'd they could also go for clawback of foreign funds held by said sites by bullying foreign governments (like they did to the hedge funds and tax dodgers in various tax havens and Sitzerland etc)

come on guys ! look at the big picture here PLEASE. do you really think O'bambam just woke up yesterday and said ........ok , ya know what we should do.
The IRS is written all over this thing, the justice department has most likely been building a case for at least a year. Something this big just does'nt come out of no where, you guys are all smarter than that. You have an industry that generates billions of dollars, The U.S. is in debt up to their eye balls, O'bambam is
not that smart. Justice, IRS and the treasurery dept. all had this thing monitored for months.....If these guys stole money from these site thier going to prison. The feds were just let'em dig the hole deeper. Thousands of people working for the federal goverment and not one of them has ever played or has and account with one of these site..........THE DIFFERANCE BETWEEN MEN IS.........MONEY no need to look any further.

If poker is not gambling, it's a mind sport like chess, why they are speaking of internet gambling and stuff?

Don't you all know that online poker is rigged for action? These companies are making "BILLIONS" not millions of dollars from rake and tournament fees. BILLIONS. These sites will eventually take ALL your money the more you play (please STFU about bankroll management). Guys like Ivey and Dwan made millions, but have you guys ever wondered how much they've given to these sites on rake alone? Personally I'm glad our government decided to shut down PS/FTP/AP... When we have criminals auditing their own rigged poker software, we needed someone to take a stand. I commend you for doing your job.

that is hilarious. Frank saying to go after those responsible for the mortgage crisis. In that case go turn yourself in sweetie.

You hit the nail right on the head. This is not a case of Government's dictating citizen behavior like boot-legging days or drugs. It's actually a War on internet business's and sites that Government's have now started due to declining tax revenues from old world physical business's, such as casino's. So unless people rally to remove those Senator's responsible for this Government interference from office, which is not likely to happen, we are all now faced with their interference until they get their cut of tax money from online poker sites. Once this happens (which is going to be difficult because if I was tilt or pro's, i would move the whole company to asia or a tax haven and give the US Government the finger :/ ), then it will be business as usual. Happy Government with their share of tax money, happy player's, and not so happy Poker companies.

it's been well documented, especially given a "previous owner" was one of the named in the indictments, that UB was always owned by the same people.

Screw the mother fr's who own the big poker sites. They riped everyone off including our gov. which is us duh. Those who continued to accept our (USA) players money after Pres.Bush outlawed it should be imprisoned for a long f'n time and fined way more than 250,000 How about 250,000 for every single count guilty on. We should send th CIA into the isle of man and where ever else the executives are hiding and bring them to justice.

How can they hope to win successful prosecutions using a law that doesn't define what Illegal Online Gambiling acually is - against companies who a operating perfectly legally where they are registered - GOD I AM SICK OF ARROGANT AMERICAN BASTARDS WHO THINK THEY OWN THE WORLD
hopefully the DOJ will get thrown out of court and the stupid US Government will then get sued for like $1bn in damages
MORONS

I just want to say, for all the awful, no good, never had a chance to understand the game So-Called Poker players....Learn how to play the game, and stop saying that you where ripped off. You ripped yourselves off by going all-in like DONKS out of position, thinking your suppose to play off simple luck. Its a mind game, its has always been about strategy. I never had a problem winning online. Theres no cheating in poker in case your at the table holding cards Learn the Knowledge of the Game, and you can be Good at the Poker Table as well online. Some of you idiots reload your play chips as well as your Real Money every five mins, going all-in on weak hands, and playing out of position, Idiots. I can't remember the last time I reloaded. Never had to. Long as you dumb dumbs, keep handing me your money and chips, I just double up You poker players from other Countries love giving up that Loot, Keep it coming. LOL

Let me say this to those people who want to blame obama for this, or those people who think online players from the United states can't play poker(such as you Clever welll i think you should take a good look at yourself and realize you are the morons that caused all this. If you would stop being so power hungry and wake up and realize we have rights in this country that have been violated then maybe you would learn some smarts. Yeah sure you can go on and on and on about how it is our fault when in reality it is precisely your fault for causing this. By the way, online poker at full tilt, and pokerstars was never reputable and yes I got the emails from them to prove it. Great customer service Matthew what planet are you on? I am sorry but if you call yourself an expert you are wrong. Maybe if you woke up and realized alot of players were getting screwed figuratively and literally well then you would understand this may have sucked but maybe this means these sites along with others will straighten themselves out. Don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about because I am a computer programmer and network administrator and have built some of the best RNG(RANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS) that fortunte 500 companies have used and I can spot poker sites that are using true RNG's and ones that are running sham RNG's like full tilt and pokerstars. If you don't believe me I can show you the #1 reason why these sites are joke sites. Then again you will have your head up your butts too far to even notice. Think about it people.

poker is definitely a game of luck and not skill

There are some serious sour grapes comments here. There are plenty of professional poker players that played exclusively online and were not scamming other players. These pros simply play alot and continue to polish their game. They realize that variance is involved, but in the long run you will win if you are a good enough player. So to read these comments about spotting shady RNG??? Get over it. The only online poker scams involved individuals being able to see other players hole cards — it has never been about the RNG. Take it for what it is — you probably were never a good poker player or simply didn't have the patience to put in the time and effort to be a good player.

I am a casual online player for several years and have been a programmer for over 20 years. Your comments about the RNG are just laughable. If online poker ever gets licensed and regulated in the US, you will still be a losing player bitching about RNG.

^^^^^^
+1

go on cardplayer the WTO is fighting the decision may not be much but its a start.

This may not be agreed to by all, but I think the poker sites have to share some of the blame for the application of UIGEA to them even though online poker may not be illegal. The legality of online poker has been discussed and beat up ad nauseum but the online poker sites should have challenged the idea that UIGEA made online poker transactions illegal right from the get go. Rather, they chose to hang on to the money that it would have cost them to challenge it and just make believe the birds would never come home to roost. I think, in this way, their greed is somewhat responsible for this. As for folks who think this may all be fixed in a year, good luck...the US Congress won't even consider it for the foreseeable future and the courts will take even longer than that.