More Payment Problems Ahead for US Facing Gaming Companies?
01/10/2009 21:10
Type Online Report
Theme poker
The saga continues with U.S. gaming payment processors.
First there were payment processing problems with gaming giant Bodog in 2008. More recently there have been legal attacks and seizures against companies processing payments for US-facing poker rooms, previously reported upon here in the Wheretobet.com news telegram. Now U.S. authorities have struck again by seizing the contents of six Wachovia Bank accounts held by a company called Forshay Enterprises, Inc. Most of the accounts seized are located in California cities in the Los Angeles area, though one is in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and another is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
It is alleged that the accounts hold gambling proceeds, which are of course painted as "money laundering" the favorite catch-all charge that U.S. prosecutors throw at anything that they don't like where money happens to be at all involved.
U.S. District Court magistrate Judge James Bredar signed the warrant on Aug. 28, based on a sealed affidavit provided by Richard S. Gunn, an Anne Arundel County police detective and task-force officer for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
This follows nine other gambling-related bank-account seizures filed in Maryland in recent months, including six accounts held by a company called Electracash, Inc., and the three more held by HMD, Inc.
This is unfortunate news and indicates additional payment processing trouble ahead for U.S. facing gaming operators.
"Q"
Wheretobet.com
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