Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Internet poker US cashout problem solved with overseas cash payouts?


Say Pokerstars had a cash window (like a racetrack) in England where you could travel to to pick up your payouts. Sounds perfectly legal for you to pick up your own payout outside the US. Matter of fact you could pick up a Pokerstars money order in England and cash it in in the English bank it was drawn or check cashing store (if they have such) -- and reconvert the cash into a money order to send to yourself in the US. No foreign bank account needed -- just you in person. No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

NEXT STEP: Say a player's personal rep goes and does the same thing for him: same legal payout process. Or, suppose, instead, some smart cookie opens a business in the US where they charge players (plural) a fee to travel to Pokerstars cash payougt window in England -- or just as legally open the same business in England to act as player pickup rep -- to pick up our winnings in cash for us -- not working for Pokerstars; working for us -- and then send checks or money orders to us in the US. No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

NEXT STEP: Say Pokerstars sends cash to US players. When I worked as a truckers helper for a Wall Street Bank in the early 1970s we took tons of mail to the Post Office some of which was registered mail containing cash going to South America. I was told that Registered mail must to be signed for by every person whose hands it passes through all the way to the recipient. Pokerstars could send small to medium payouts by registered mail right now. Really large deliveries could be done by armed insured messenger (you might want to make an appointment to meet the messenger in a bank).
No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

Problem solved? I hope this looks as good in the morning as it does at 4AM. :-)

[PS. See the following legal essay on the unlikelihood of anyone ever standing trial -- not talking about copping out either: http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/blog/299-federal-poker-indictments-revisiting-prohibition.html]

2 comments:

Denis Drew said...

If you bring cash in person to the Isle of Man or remove it in person you are not hiding the connection between a US BANK and Pokerstars -- there IS NO connection to hide. Once you have a cash payout in your hand you can bring it home or WU it home or whatever -- cash is fungible. When you get home you may hide it under your mattress legally may you not?

The bank cannot get in trouble for taking your deposit -- and -- guess what -- persons cannot get in trouble for making a deposit from an illegal gambling payout (bookie?) or most people at 2plus2 would be in trouble. Anyone who gets paid by a bookie or gains by selling a stolen item is guilty of money laundering only if they use a fake shell entity to receive the "ill gotten gains."

Denis Drew said...

YOUR MONEY IS SAID TO BE SAFE ACCORDING TO THIS UK LAWYER WHO REALLY SEEMS TO KNOW WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/more-bad-news-coming-middle-week-1022712/


Originally Posted by excession

OK so I'm a UK lawyer with some knowledge of IOM law (I got involved in some quite heavy timeshare litigation there in the 90's).

PS spend a lot of money on city of London lawyers who advise them on gaming regulation compliance.

They are licensed by the IOM Gaming Commission which is pretty legit and has some pretty strong customer protection regs.

Most notable are the Online Gambling Participants' Money Regs 2010

http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/gambling/...antsmoney1.pdf

These provide that all customer money has to be kept in a segregated bank account and is deemed to be held in trust.

The concept of trust monies is very important under UK Insolvency Law as monies held in trust fall outside the estate of a bankrupt individual or insolvent corporate entity and the liquidator can't get his hands on them.

Also as they are not the site's monies judicial orders purporting to seize the site's monies won't affect them.

I suppose the US government can effectively stop payments out to the US player base by banning the banks within their jurisdiction from handling such payments, but I am really struggling to see how they can realistically stop payments out to non-US players of what is legally their money in anything other than the very short term panic that might cause banks holding such funds to freeze funds whilst they go get an order from an IOM or UK court to clarify what they should do with them.

If PS are governed by the Regs and if they have complied then they SHOULD be no issue in non-US players getting money back out of PS in fairly short order.

FT is governed by Channel Island regs which will be similar.

[negative comment about other two sites deleted]

Your talking like America rules the world...