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Online Poker Seizure Case
 
July 29, 2009

For those of you unaware, it would seem that the federal government has declared war on the online poker players out there. They came forward and said that they needed to seize the accounts of thousands of online poker players as they deemed a danger to the well being of the country.
 
Costigan Media then came forward and said that they were making a motion that the warrants and the affidavits of the seizure needed to be unsealed. That motion is due to be ruled on next week, and poker players around the country are waiting to see where this might take them. Lawyers from both sides went to court on Monday to see where the court stood with the warrants.
 
The US Government claimed that the poker funds had to be seized and that the warrants had to remain sealed because of the information that they contained in as far as the names of their informants. The government argued that the names needed to be kept secret and that they had “law enforcement concerns” with unsealing the documents.
 
The judge said that she did not understand why the warrants should remain sealed and that other than the names she did not see any reason not to unseal them. Costigan Media says that the government came in and took poker players’ money from the payment processors without a real reason why they were doing it, so under the First Amendment they had the right to see what those poker players were being charged with.
 
It will be interesting to see how the court rules and if the documents are unsealed what the charges are against the poker players.