An agressive move was taken by the US Government on Friday to close some of the World's largest online poker sites including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars and Absolute Poker.
Federal prosecutors have charged three of the largest Internet poker companies with fraudulently getting banks to process billions of dollars of illegal betting proceeds.
A total of eleven people, including the owners of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker have been reported to have been charged with violating the US's anti-Internet gambling laws which include poker.
Isai Scheinber and Paul Tate of PokerStars, Scott Tom and Brent Beckley of Absolute Poker, and Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick of Full Tilt Poker have all been charged with being involved in a scheme "to deceive United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments for the poker companies, by, among other things, arranging for the money received from United States gamblers to be disguised as payments to hundreds of non-existent online merchants and other non-gambling businesses."
Prosecutors for the US Government have also filed civil money laundering charges seeking to recover at least $3 billion from the companies, are of which all based overseas.
The US Attorney's Office in Manhattan has also moved to try to shut down the online poker businesses by moving to seize five of the largest poker site domain names, which include, Pokerstars.com and Fulltiltpoker.com, the largest poker companies in the World of online poker.
http://www.doolallys.com/gambling-news/archive/2011-04-15/us_govt_to_close_poker_sites
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/April11/scheinbergetalindictmentpr.pdf
Subject: US Govt to Close Poker Sites 
Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:22 am