Strikeforce Sponsor in Trouble as Government Attacks Online Poker

Not sure yet something to do with breaking some accounting laws and using some loo-polls that were still considered illegal. He was running one of the poker sites money through his bank. Its pretty messed up he has some serious charges against him. Its never a good sign when the FBI show up for ya.

That doesn’t seem correct.

When i go to the .coms from Canada i get an FBI seizure notice (this: http://i.imgur.com/alJBw.png). And i know the .nets have at least freeroll tournaments that have real cash prizes.

More than one guys that actually won big money on these sites here in the US. I think many of them list there companies in Gibraltar which gives some sort of a safe haven.

If he thought he’d sniff the White House after diagnosing Terry Schaivo on the Senate floor having never met her.

In my experience, this is exactly how such things work. Why engage in competition with other businesses in your industry when you can simply collude with the government to establish barriers to entry and/or put them right out of business. If your government has enormous latitude in regulating commerce (as the US government certainly does), the incentive to collude with government is greatly increased and the already established businesses with the most capital see their relative power skyrocket at the expense of the smaller guys. Very unfortunate.

Can you elaborate on this a bit please?

Similar to how the Fertitta brothers purportedly bought the UFC.

So if I understand the details (great discussion in this forum!)…it looks like the gov’t will essentially ban these companies from the U.S., fine them heavily, then regulate online gambling just in time for the already-entrenched casino industry to swoop in and chow down on some carrion, and make a fortune. Wow.

By late 2009, after U.S. banks and financial institutions detected and shut down multiple fraudulent bank accounts used by the Poker Companies, SCHEINBERG and BITAR [owners of Stars and FTP respectively] developed a new processing strategy that would not involve lying to banks. PokerStars, FullTilt Poker, and their payment processors persuaded the principals of a few small, local banks facing financial difficulties to engage in such processing in return for multi-million dollar investments in the banks. For example, in September 2009, ELIE [a payment processor] and others approached defendant JOHN CAMPOS, the Vice Chairman of the Board and part-owner of SunFirst Bank, a small, private bank based in Saint George, Utah, about processing Internet poker transactions. While expressing “trepidations,” CAMPOS allegedly agreed to process gambling transactions in return for a $10 million investment in SunFirst by ELIE and an associate, which would give them a more than 30% ownership stake in the bank. CAMPOS also requested and received a $20,000 “bonus” for his assistance. In an e-mail, one of ELIE’s associates boasted that they had “purchased” SunFirst and that they “were looking to purchase” “a grand total of 3 or 4 banks” to process payments.

and

Because U.S. banks and credit card issuers were largely unwilling to process their payments, the Poker Companies allegedly used fraudulent methods to circumvent federal law and trick these institutions into processing payments on their behalf. For example, defendants ISAI SCHEINBERG and PAUL TATE of PokerStars, RAYMOND BITAR and NELSON BURTNICK of Full Tilt Poker, and SCOTT TOM and BRENT BECKLEY of Absolute Poker, arranged for the money received from U.S. gamblers to be disguised as payments to hundreds of non-existent online merchants purporting to sell merchandise such as jewelry and golf balls.

Probably along those lines yeah. Depends on the fighter, of course. And his tv time. But if a guy gets paid 20 to show and is sponsored by Full Tilt, which is common in SF, and then has apparel behind them like affliction. thats around 60 just to show. I mean if we are just going by 20k for each major sponsor. This is all hearsay but it sheds some light as to what some fighters make off sponsors.

When you’re built on dirty money, your number one goal is save a little for yourself and spend every other dime making more of it. The “double money” thing is only for these billion dollar online entities.

Real money.