That's a intended feature, not a bug. The whole point of a trial by a jury of your peers is to allow your peers to let you off the hook if they don't think that you deserve to hang for whatever you did. That's why they made King John and King Henry agree to it in the Magna Carta (and why we put it in the Constitution here in the USA).

To be sure, jury nullification can be abused, but you can't get rid of jury nullification unless you effectively get rid of juries (read about Bushel’s Case if you don't see why). So to say it's a violation of the rule of law is a non sequitur - the law that you can only be convicted if a jury is willing to convict overrides any criminal law. In the US this priority in law is explicit. In the UK, it's not as explicit, because your constitution is unwritten, but it's still the rule.

[/derail]

The purpose of the rule of law is to allow people to plan their lives around the law. Thus, certain substantive legal provisions can themselves be contrary to the rule of law. This is one of them.

And yes, juries were a pretty horrendous idea in the first place.

amaya killed independent pokerstars(seinfeld)

Jesus christ, ****ing stahp.

Whether there's any truth to the statement I made does not change whether it was a joke or not. That there's some minor degree of plausibility is what makes it funny.

I have the same amount of evidence to say "His secret investors were a bunch of polar bears and he was just waiting for them to come out of hibernation." That wouldn't be funny because that's obviously a completely false statement because everyone knows that polar bears don't hibernate.

lol

Panama Papers include the names of Baazov's sister (Goulissa Baazov), Isam Mansour (one of the named defendants in the AMF insider trader thing), and Stephan Sebag of Montreal (apparent relation to Amaya CFO Daniel Sebag, though unconfirmed?):

http://calvinayre.com/2016/04/05/bus...investigation/

Keep peeling the onion...

GG, PokerStars US.

"The possible connection of Amaya to a business that appeared to be actively processing payments for US-facing online gambling companies in defiance of the UIGEA could prove of particular interest to gaming regulators in New Jersey"

An hour ago there were 42 cash tables going on Stars NJ, 22 of them full, up to $5/10 NL. They must be covering costs there no problem.

Amaya and Baazov are really just too shady an operation to be in charge of Stars. It needs to be sold on to some group with at least a half decent background. I'd be amazed if NJ doesn't pull their licence sooner or later. A shame cos Stars is making a good go of it in NJ, and that could spread to other states, there are just too many skeletons in the closet with Amaya, Stars needs a new owner.

DGE won't pull their license, they'll just tell Amaya to separate all of the individuals they have problems with (upon threat of having license pulled). That's how "regulated" gaming works: they still want the revenues -- they just give you the boot and keep the booty.

Pretty wild stuff

Ouch, the hits keep coming.

We have a group of *alleged* white collar criminals running the worlds largest poker site. What could possibly go wrong?

Two weeks ago I predicted more bad things happening for Amaya. The top people at Stars are white collar crooks who have managed to win favour with influential people who are able to influence banks and lenders to give Amaya and company money. It's really that simple.

Considering the names of some of the people leading the class action suits against Amaya it's pretty obvious that Amaya's days of gaming the system are coming to an end. The rug has been pulled and more bad things will continue to happen to Amaya. I will switch my bet from 1 year to before 2016 comes to an end that Amaya will no longer own Pstars.

Class action suits like this are a dime a dozen, and a matter of business for semi-shady business practices (I'm in the legit money management business - for over 20 years). With that being said, anybody still holding a decent amount of money in PS is a glutton for punishment. AYA is the ultimate gambler's stock. You don't last long in the money management business betting all your eggs on hitting a flush on the river... unless you have "non-public" information.

You clearly have zero understanding of how the world's largest poker site came to be that.

Google Scheinberg and indictment before you complain about "alleged" criminals, whose alleged crime was providing online poker services to the US.

(FWIW, the running of a site is not the "criminal" concern re Mr. Baazov, it is insider trading by folks he allegedly tipped off.)

The issue is not necessarily whether the folks running a business are allegedly criminals with respect to some other activity, but rather whether they are competent at running the business.

I think what he is trying to say is that companies like pokerstars, who knowingling violate US banking laws and are indicted for it, may be less than trustworthy with player deposits. Same principle applies to people who do insider trading or other financial crimes. The chance thay run off with player deposits is much higher if they are already know to commit other crimes.
They were not indicted for providing poker services to US customers. They were indicted for money laundering and they knew what they were doing was illegal and they did it anyway.
Yes, I get it...we all like online poker and wish it were legal.But it is not, so we can't excuse their criminal behavior just cause we want online poker to be legal or because we think it should be legal.

You obviously didn't get the memo - most of the big financial institutions knowingly violated US banking laws.

Pstars, pre-Amaya, merely provided their largely legal services to US customers.

Maybe I mis-remebered it. It has been several years.
Googled United States vs. Scheinberg
Looks like I thought. Criminal indictments.

I think i overlooked the real crime here. Someone named their daughter "Goulissa"

Scheinberg allegedly broke laws that most people participating in a poker forum don't agree with. In the process he did not steal from players nor did he steal from banks or other financial institutions. That he not only payed off all his US facing players, paid all the fines and bought FTP so FTP players could get paid off. That he still hasn't has the charges against him cleared while people like Lederer and Bitar (who actually did steal from players) have is absolutely disgusting.

That's a whole different situation morally than insider trading which in my opinion is worse and would lead me to trust them less.

News flash, processing deposits and cashouts seems to be part of providing online poker. The processing of deposits and cashouts WAS the underlying crime charged.

Your reasoning is either incredibly naive as to how the world works or plain shallow or both. Yeah, it was illegal to lie to banks; I would not have done it, but are you a poker cop ?

lol. This and the bit about hibernating polar bear investors are the funniest things I've heard this week.

All I know about the Baazovs I've learned in this thread, but they just don't seem to have the panache of your typical billion-dollar deal-makers.

Maybe they're just the bagmen in this scheme.

Scheinberg's will go down as the smartest people in online poker history..they built the best company, had the best software, customer service and made the absolute most money for more than a decade, after which sold PS at the absolute peak of online poker, cashing out at the top...

They should call this Baazov guy 'Mr Deal' cos he doesn't seem to have any skills other than 'making deals'.

Bet he couldn't even deal a hand of poker, any kind. How did he manage to get banks/investors to give him $5 billion to play with, do they do no research into his background?

poker wasn't mentioned, it was about 'gambling sites' and as far as i understood, FTP and PS had plenty of lawyers thinking they're okay, since it wasn't a typical casino game, where ppl lost their money to the house ... but anyway. NVG is about your own opinion and ppl always argue with pseudo facts, as if they where lawyers.


@ calvin ayre piece ... while i've no doubt, Baazov is a guy, who would use companies in 'tax heavens' to save money, it seems the 'panama papers' part is a bit of a click bait:

https://www.cardschat.com/news/panam...d-baazov-21311

http://www.flushdraw.net/news/misc/p...ng-world-ties/


and even it would be the 'real' panama papers ... gambling sites operate almost exclusively with companies on small islands with fun tax laws ... so while the CA story is definitely news/read worthy, i don't see why this should affect Amaya or PokerStars ... i think the AMF investigation is far more serious and important