Government Interference in Poker

June 13, 2009

By now everyone in the online poker industry has heard about the government seizure of poker monies that were sitting in bank accounts. They took 27,000 poker accounts, which equals more than $33 million dollars, and said that it was now government property. Of course people didn’t realize that their accounts had been frozen until they tried to cash their checks only to realize that they were bouncing.

When asked why, the government said that there were exigent circumstances and therefore they did not need a warrant. Now exigent circumstances mean that there is some kind of an emergency taking place, and this does not seem to be the case when it comes to poker funds.

It has been almost three years since the passage of the UIGEA and the government is still fighting to get online poker playing and gambling to stop – which is has not done. So now they seem to have taken on the mantle that they can take whatever money they can, in hopes of bullying poker players into not playing.

The government has been running under the assumption that they are doing what is in the country’s best interest by protecting them from themselves and how they spend their money. Obviously there are people who have problems with gambling, but there are people who have problems with food – are we going to start limiting the amount of food that people can buy as well? By limiting anything we tell residents that they just aren’t smart enough to take care of themselves, which is really not the case.