Poker Sites To Refund Players’ Money

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PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, two of the three sites shuttered in a Department of Justice crackdown on online gambling, will be allowed to reclaim their domain names in order to refund money to players, according to the DOJ.

“No individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained, and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to reimburse any player’s deposited funds,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release this morning. “The agreements allow for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to use [their]…domain names to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies. The deposit of funds by U.S. players is expressly prohibited.”

Absolute Poker, the third site affected by the indictment issued Friday in New York’s Southern District, has the option of entering into the same agreement, according to a DOJ spokesman. Players based in the U.S. will still have to hit brick-and-mortar casinos to find a game, but are not in legal danger themselves, since there is no federal law that prohibits playing poker online.