Poker's Black Friday
US indictments and domain seizures hit the three biggest poker sites and froze players' funds.
On 15 April 2011 the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment (United States v. Scheinberg) charging executives of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling. The government seized the sites' .com domains and froze around 76 bank accounts across 14 countries, and the civil complaint sought roughly US$3 billion. PokerStars and Full Tilt immediately stopped serving US players.
Known in the poker world as 'Black Friday', the action ended the era of large, US-facing offshore poker. Eleven individuals were charged, including PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg and Full Tilt CEO Raymond Bitar; a SunFirst Bank executive was also named for helping disguise gambling transactions as unrelated payments. The seizure of pokerstars.com, fulltiltpoker.com, absolutepoker.com and ultimatebet.com instantly cut off American players. PokerStars, which held player balances in segregated accounts, was able to repay US players quickly, but Full Tilt could not — exposing a funds shortfall that became a separate scandal. Black Friday devastated the US online poker economy and pushed the surviving industry toward state-by-state regulation.
Black Friday abruptly ended unregulated US online poker and exposed how player deposits were handled, forcing a shift to licensed, state-regulated markets.
A teaching summary, not legal advice. Dates and figures are simplified for learning; confirm against the primary sources before relying on them.