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Originally Posted by momo_the_kid
But it seems DOJ is trying its best to get the players paid from various inside sources the mod here has.
I didn't take that from anything I have read of NoahSD's posts. Perhaps I missed something. Care to point it out?
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Originally Posted by momo_the_kid
And as a branch of US government, this should be part of their responsibilities - to protect US citizens' interest. you make it sound like they are only interested in catching the bad guys and don't care at all about collateral damage. They are like cops. You get a medal if you catch 10 bad guys and get all their money. You probably don't get a medal and will be in some trouble if you hurt 100 innocent people in the process.
Legally, it is not the DoJ that caused poker players damage. The DoJ were performing their duty, which is, as you say, to catch bad guys. It is not their job to compensate people who get hurt by bad guys.
I think you would have a hard time making the case that the DoJ acted with reckless disregard to player's interests. The DoJ didn't treat FTP and Stars differently. US players at Stars were inconvenienced by having their money tied up for a couple of weeks and now they cannot play at Stars any more, but they got their money back. FTP players are in a different boat, but not because of the DoJ - it's because of how FTP operated. It is not up to the DoJ to fix that. The DoJ's view, as expressed in their PR, is that it is up to the sites to reimburse the players.
I'm not saying that the DoJ want players to go unpaid. I'm saying that getting players paid is not part of their job, so it isn't one of their official goals. Individual employees at the DoJ may indeed prefer that players get paid, but they are limited to operating within the law, and within their defined powers.
I have said in the past that I do not think it is impossible that the DoJ might negotiate, as part of a larger settlement, the unfreezing of some assets if it was guaranteed that those assets would go to paying players. I do not see how, once funds have been forfeited to the DoJ, those funds can then be turned over to players.
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Why are you so sure this is true?
I'm not sure which "this" you are referring to. Hopefully this response addresses your concern.
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They already let Stars pay Americans even though they didn't have to. In fact, the very first news to come out of the DOJ in the aftermath of Black Friday was that they had negotiated settlements with the sites to allow them to use their domains to facilitate paying their American customers. When they prosecuted the Neteller guys, they let them pay Americans.
What do you mean the DoJ didn't have to let Stars pay Americans? What right or power did they have to stop them?
They didn't negotiate settlements
to allow the sites to use the domains to pay players. They negotiated settlements
which allowed the sites to use the domains to pay players. Don't confuse purpose with effect. They negotiated the settlements
to get the sites to agree to stop serving US players.
The DoJ have no reason to actively prevent sites from paying money the sites owe to players. It is not illegal for sites to transfer money to players. At the same time the DoJ are not going to allow players to be paid using money that the DoJ regard as rightfully belonging to the US, through fines or forfeitures.
To the extent that paying out funds weakens the sites ability to serve US players, having the sites pay back players is an aid to the DoJ's goals.
Perhaps the DoJ could have made it more difficult to pay players, by not making the agrement to return the URL's. But that would have been acting against one of their own primary goals, to stop the sites from operating in the US. In making the URL deal, the DoJ got what they wanted: they got the sites to agree not to serve US players. What did the DoJ have to give up to get this agreement? Nothing that they wanted to hold onto. They have no reason to hold onto money that belongs to the players but not to the US government. So they let Stars pay players out of the player money pool. If FTP had one, they would have let FTP pay out of that too. They gave the URLs back. So what? The DoJ doesn't need those URLs. They don't want to operate poker sites. The DoJ did not give up frozen or seized accounts, because they regard the money as potentially belonging to the US.
In the Neteller case, I believe the payouts were part of the negotiated final settlement. Perhaps the DoJ don't care whether Neteller paid the money to the players or to the court, as long as Neteller paid. We don't have a final settlement in the FTP case, so those funds are not flowing.