Earlier today, three of the Web’s largest poker sites — PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker — were seized by the FBI after the U.S. Attorney for New York opened an indictment charging the site’s founders for bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.
The websites for FullTiltPoker.net and AbsolutePoker.com have since been replaced with an FBI message that states online gambling to be an illegal activity. (For some areas, these sites are still showing up normally due to a delay in DNS updates.)
Business Insider reports:
The indictment essentially spells out a scheme by the poker companies to set up phony bank accounts to process illegal gambling transactions, either by lying to the banks about the nature of the transactions or by targeting struggling banks to who need the money to stay afloat.
In addition to what is being called a “multi-billion dollar” lawsuit, the official document states: ”Restraining orders were issued against more than 75 bank accounts utilized by the Poker Companies and their payment processors, and five Internet domain names used by the Poker Companies to host their illegal poker games were seized.”
More on TIME.com:
World Series Poker: Attack of the Math Brats
