Absolute Poker files for bankruptcy

Submitted by: TightEnd on Thu, 05/05/2011 - 8:34am
One of three online poker companies named last month in a federal indictment will be forced to enter bankruptcy, leaving players with money on deposit with the Absolute and UB poker sites empty handed.

Madeira Fjord of Norway, which represents shareholders in the poker websites’ parent company, Blanca Gaming of Antigua, said in an email to shareholders this week that it planned to file for bankruptcy protection in Norway after being informed that the latter company had “no cash on hand and no prospects for any cash flow for the foreseeable future.”

“Most importantly, Blanca Gaming has provided notice … that it is currently unable to make any payments toward its debt obligations,” it said. “Additionally, Blanca has further advised that there will be no future payments.”

Absolute Poker and two of its founders — Scott Tom and Brent Beckley — were named in an April 15 indictment by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York along with two other popular poker sites — Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. UB was not directly named in the indictment, but it has common ownership and shares operations with Absolute Poker through parent company, the Cereus Network, which is in turn owned by Blanca Gaming.

The indictment alleges that the sites committed bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses by “tricking” U.S. banks into processing online gambling transactions, a violation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The indictment seeks at least $3 billion in penalties and forfeiture.

The government also seized five Internet domain names used by the companies, but later relinquished control of those owned by Poker Stars and Full Tilt to facilitate repayment of U.S. players’ deposits.

The former has begun repaying money on deposit to U.S. poker players while the latter has said it is making arrangements to do so.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said it was willing to make a similar deal with Absolute Poker and UB, but no agreement was forthcoming.