Poll results: DoJ not done enough over Black Friday
60% of readers believe Department of Justice could have done more.
With rumours of an audacious bid by PokerStars to acquire Full Tilt Poker still circulating following the collapse of Groupe Bernard Tapie’s acquisition of the stricken brand, we asked readers whether the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has done enough over the Black Friday indictments, and the majority replied in the negative.
With only one of the six indictees connected to Stars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker under arrest and entering a plea, and just six of the total 11 indictees having pleaded guilty, 60% of those polled believe the DoJ has not done enough.
The fact that the Tilt deal is understood to include a settlement with the DoJ which could perhaps one day allow Stars to re-enter a regulated US market backs this up, with US District Attorney Preet Bharara now shying away from his reference seven months ago to Tilt “a global Ponzi scheme”.
Such a change of tack has led to Judge Lewis Kaplan accusing the US government of “walking away from the case” after payment processor John Campos entered a guilty plea for a single misdemeanour charge. Despite Kaplan’s claim, 26% of readers feel that the progress made on convicting the payments processors means that with the DoJ has done enough, but only with regards to bringing the processors to justice.
Further moves to prosecute individuals however, with the indictment unsealed against Calvin Ayre and three other Bodog.com executives, suggests the DoJ is committed to hunting down those who ran allegedly illegal gambling operations that served, among others, US citizens. What happens next remains unclear.