Everyone must have heard of internet poker’s Black Friday. For those few who haven’t; on Friday the 15th of April 2011, the owners of the biggest internet poker sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, were arrested and their sites were shutdown in the United States after the Department of Justice accused them of money laundering and defrauding banks to get past gambling laws.
One of the main figures in this scandal is Ira Rubin. Rubin has helped the three internet poker companies to transfer billions of dollars from their US customers to offshore havens. Rubin has pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of money laundering, bank and wire fraud, and gambling offenses. He could end up spending 55 years in prison. His sentence is due to be heard on the 17th of May 2012.
Rubin was arraigned last year by the F.B.I, who closed down PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker; the three biggest online poker companies in business in the United States, which ended in charges against 11 individuals.
Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney who announced the appeal deal said that Rubin assisted those three online poker companies with their payments processing by concealing those transactions so they’d be considered as non gambling related funds. Purchases by poker players appeared as if they were made at online stores buying various items.
Bharara added that in the wake of U.S Banks prohibiting the processing of online gambling payments, some companies had been dealing with third party payment service providers and some of those would mask those transactions as non internet gambling ones. And this is exactly what Rubin was delving into.
Written for Online Poker Online by Helen.