Feds Tell U.S. Banks To Freeze Online Poker Winnings
By Anna Johnson on July 2nd, 2009U.S. federal prosecutors have asked four major banks to freeze an estimated $33 million in winnings owed to American online poker players who won the money on offshore poker websites.
The move comes at a time when there have been renewed calls for the federal government to reverse its 2006 ban on Internet gambling. A few weeks ago, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank reintroduced legislation that would reverse the 2006 ban.
Congressman Frank argues that people should be entitled to gamble as a civil liberty, and that, in any case, the federal government could collect increased tax revenues through the regulation of Internet gambling.
International poker champion and author of ‘Poker Wizards’, Warwick Dunnett, says poker should not be subject to restriction. Not only is it a sport requiring a high degree of skill, but prohibition itself causes undesirable consequences.
“Just as prohibition of alcohol caused a huge groundswell of illegal activity, so goes Internet gambling,” said Dunnett in a press release. “Millions of players still have access to online poker sites in the U.S. but, in many cases, are subject to doing business with organizations that are unsupervised and unregulated. This opens multiple opportunities for fraud and illegal activities in a multi-billion-dollar industry.”
According to his bio, Warwick Dunnett is a former Boeing 747 captain who discovered the world of competitive poker in 2003. After playing the game for just a few months, Dunnett began winning tournaments, including a $13,000 entry package into the Australian Poker Championship Main Event.
By 2005 his winnings from poker rivaled his income as a professional pilot when he won $85,000 in Australia for 6th place in “Aussie Millions.”
