County Gambling Seizure Draws Ire of Poker Players

News last week that the Anne Arundel County Police Department had received more than $470,000 in seized funds from a federal investigation into online gambling has raised the ire of poker players both locally and from around the world.

Odenton Patch  that the county received a portion of funds seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. ICE collected more than $30 million in transactions between December 2009 and January 2011, after setting up a phony payment processing company. The Anne Arundel County Police Department assisted in the investigation.

The generated more than 120 comments, most from people who opposed the government’s distribution of the money. The story attracted readers from all over the country and as far away as the Netherlands, France and Thailand.

To online gamblers and poker players in particular, the seizure and distribution of the funds was the equivalent of a theft.

“What upset me so much was the seizure of those funds and it not being facilitated to get the funds back to the players,” said Bill Sutton, a restaurant manager from Edgewater, who lost $1,000 when a poker site was shut down by the federal government. 

Sutton’s money was tied up with Full Tilt Poker, a top online poker site that was shut down in a federal action separate from the one involving Anne Arundel County. But he said he was angered that law enforcement officials appeared to have no plans to work with site operators to return funds to players, who were not the target of the investigation.

“I understand it was a big score for them, and it was a lot of work for them to do it,” he said. “The thing that upset me the most was that they are taking funds from players when it has not been deemed illegal.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore said it had no plans to give money back.

“Illegal gambling proceeds are forfeited to the government,” spokeswoman Vickie E. LeDuc said. “Anyone who believes that an Internet gambling business owes them money can try to collect from the Internet gambling business. The government is not going to give the money to gamblers.”

Legal experts said the distribution of seized money is not unprecedented, but that it’s rare for a local department to hold a press conference and photo op.

“I think this unusual,” said Joe Kelly, a professor of Business Law at SUNY College at Buffalo, and frequent legal consultant on gambling issues. “I’m not saying it hasn’t been done, but this is the first time I’ve seen it done with this type of publicity.”

In April, a federal grand jury in Baltimore indicted two businesses and three defendants with online gambling. Last month, ICE seized 11 bank accounts and shut down 10 domain names tied to gambling sites. It was the latest in what appears to be a nationwide crackdown on online gambling operations.

Tensions in the online poker community have been particularly heightened since the U.S. Department of Justice in April shut down three of the most popular poker sites–Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars and Absolute Poker–charging the owners with bank fraud, illegal gambling and money laundering. Many players said they were out thousands of dollars, and some claimed they have lost their main source of income.

“I know a lot of people that do play for a living,” Sutton said. “A lot of them are my mentors, and they’ve lost their livelihood.”

Sutton said he once held money on as many as 15 poker sites, but reduced his level of gambling after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006, which prohibits companies from accepting online gambling payments.

The UIGEA has been used as a main justification for the recent crackdown on gambling sites. But there is still debate between law enforcement agencies and gamblers about what kind of gambling is explicitly legal and illegal under the law.

Federal laws make it illegal to use U.S. financial institutions to process payments from online gambling, and explicitly bans online sports betting. But in the view of many online gambling proponents, poker is a game of skill, not chance, and should not be lumped in with sports betting and other games.

“With poker, you’re not playing against the house, you’re playing against other people,” Sutton said. “Yes, there is some luck involved, but it’s an odds thing. If you play when the odds are in your favorite during a particular hand, you’re going to win more than you lose.”

Sutton said he made his first deposit of $50 at an online poker site five or six years ago and has done well enough that he hasn’t had to dip into personal funds since.

“I’ve been able to purchase some nice things,” he said. “There have been thousands of dollars that I’ve been able to pull out as a fun hobby.”

The treatment of online poker also varies from state to state. In some states, judges have come out at least partially on the side of poker players, and players themselves are rarely targeted by law enforcement agencies. Washington is the only state where playing online poker is explicitly illegal. Maryland, however, is another state where legal rulings are less favorable, legal experts said.

“When you look at everything, it doesn’t look good for poker in Maryland,” Kelly said. “I’d much rather defend poker players in New York, South Carolina or a number of other states than Maryland.”