ya, bit confusing there.. i just interpreted it to mean "have I ever played any other time in the US not including the time in question"

Yeah it's serious lol that it's even allowed to be played in America without the use of a VPN.

If stars confiscates your funds, it should be almost 99% banned account with rare circumstances that allows you to continue while they confiscate funds from X period to Y period of time.

*** u Stars so far for this and it's another embarrassment on top of the other embarrassments from late.

I'm digging the burn, digging it.

whats your Stars SN and also your other 2+2 SN?

i don't have another 2+2 … literally first post… but seems like good site, getting good responses from you ppl, and now Chris from PS is going to try to help.. maybe ill stay on

who u kiddin u stayn on 4 life

seems way and way too harsh.

deal...If I get my money back… ill definitely be on for life!… otherwise I'm pretty much done with online poker.

OP, ask Stars to provide the IP address & location from which they saw you playing before you switched to WiFi. I'm no expert, but somehow your data provider showed them a non-US ip address.

That can happen. I live in Brisbane but my old ISP somehow issued IPs that resolved to California.

Do you have free roaming with your cell/mobile network?

Also post your Stars SN

Punishment does not fit the crime. Where does stars draw the line? What if he had 1 mil in his account, all good to take that too?

If they blocked him from playing due to tos almost understandable but they are letting him redeposit? 5k for 25 dollars to a gambling charity. One word that comes to mind which is incompetence, the other ROBBERY. Pretty sure that poker rep in this thread will make it right but still a palm face with regard to their original decision.

Title needs to be changed to "Pokerstars stole all of my money".

What does the account balance have to do with any of this? Stars said the result of its investigation was that the player used the site from the US on one day only (as the player admitted) so any confiscation should relate to profits on that day only. Whether he happened to have $10 or $10m balance at the date they challenged him is irrelevant.

Stars' approach is a huge disincentive to keeping a large balance.

gotta pay down that debt somehow.

OP's case seems pretty str8forward. Stars tried to steal his money, and b/ he didn't roll over and decided instead to post here, they'll give it back. what's more interesting is what would have happened if he hadn't tried to log-in through a US wifi connection. would they have caught him then?

i'm sure the new security manager will have some ?s for the software guys be4 they lay a bunch of them off.

Do you mind letting us know what your general poker history is on the site? By that I simply mean are you a pro? Have you won a lot? Or do you play low stakes for fun and hope to win a little pocket change in the process?

From how you explain it, I would guess the truth is the latter which really makes it hard to believe you had overly malicious intentions here and the seizure of your money is pretty disturbing to me.

There is a massive tide change going on toward Stars right now. While I think your situation would have garnered a fair amount of sympathy at any time, in the past when people made a "Stars seized my money" thread, 80% of 2+2 would pretty much just say Stars does no wrong so you must be lying. They are losing that good will so fast since the Amaya purchase and if your story is accurate, it will be another blow. This is definitely not something I am happy about as I used to have real pride when talking about the ethical nature of the leading company in the industry.

Just because they 'can' seize your money certainly doesn't make it right. Money seize should be for only the most extreme situations where other players are direct victims. This is generally a victim-less crime without too much stretching and at most they should just confiscate the funds involved in real money play from the US or the profits, or even just let you keep your damn money and explain that what happened can't happen again.

Bumping for update from Stars rep. Can we at least get confirmation that events occurred the way OP has claimed they occurred?

@OP you should post your Pokerstars screenname in the thread for the sake of transparency

The PokerStars TOS pretty much says that PokerStars can do anything that it wants with absolutely no consequences. I really doubt that it's TOS is as binding as PokerStars would have its customers believe.

There's a reason that people have to sign contracts rather than just be shown a contract. There has to be a meeting of the minds. It's pretty well known that most people don't even bother to read a site's TOS. A TOS is a pretty weak form of contract. Microsoft used to have a clause in their TOS that if someone who had bought windows said anything negative about Microsoft that MS could revoke the license for Windows. How enforceable would that have been? Not to mention that contracts can't override consumer protections. I'm not so sure that, if push came to shove, PokerStars could successfully give a player's bankroll to charity.

Not free roaming...but Rogers offers $7.99/day data up to 50MB while travelling to the US… it just activates automatically, you don't have to sign up for a travel plan. Under that network I was able to play for real money.

There might be another factor here, the agreement between the DOJ and PS, and what has to happen when players from the US use real money. I know nothing of the agreement, just throwing it out there.

"I didn't know" and "honest mistake" doesn't fly in a US courtroom, and that type of language might be in the agreement that kept PS execs from going to jail.

BOSON.. here is what I found on the DOJ website in regards to the agreement with PokerStars:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pres...ettlement.html

"PokerStars is prohibited from offering online poker in the U.S. for real money unless and until it is legal to do so under U.S. law."

If you read the whole document, the US DOJ blames PokerStars/Full Tilt for accepting US players money when it is not legal to do so. If I recall correctly, the US players were not punished, they all got their money back.

PokerStars mentioned the DOJ in their email to the OP. But in reality, the DOJ is really just a bunch of lawyers making threats to PokerStars. The DOJ can't make any kind of judgements or give a TOS any greater weight than it normally would have. PokerStars' customers didn't make any kind of agreements with the DOJ. So in PokerStars email, PS is really just explaining why they are taking such drastic actions but it doesn't give PS any greater rights to execute those actions than normal.

I've been in court a number of times. "I didn't know" and "honest mistake" does better than you might think in a civil case.

[QUOTE=insidemanpoker;45043710]Do you mind letting us know what your general poker history is on the site? By that I simply mean are you a pro? Have you won a lot? Or do you play low stakes for fun and hope to win a little pocket change in the process?

From how you explain it, I would guess the truth is the latter which really makes it hard to believe you had overly malicious intentions here and the seizure of your money is pretty disturbing to me.

I play low/microstakes, definitely not a pro… those were all my winnings accumulated over a couple years, mostly playing $25NL. Ive been playing more the last few months when I jumped to $50NL, and got to platinumstar (but it looks like ill be back to bronzestar in a couple days).

I'm not going to discuss OP's account in a public forum so any updates would have to come from him.

Thats a good point. Thanks for the link, going to read it.