In late breaking news on Thursday night, PokerStars will be temporarily denied a license for online gaming in New Jersey.
According to Poker Player Newspaper, “three insiders” with direct knowledge of the ongoing procedures in the Garden State – and at least one of those insiders being from “the other side of the pond” – have said that the potential PokerStars partnership with Resorts International for the upcoming opening of the New Jersey gaming scene will be denied. Poker Player Newspaper reports that the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is having “concerns” about the criminal case that is still plaguing the founder of the site, Isai Scheinberg, from the April 2011 indictments that crippled the U. S. online poker world.
Scheinberg, who was criminally indicted with 10 other men in the “Black Friday” case, has remained at large since those indictments were meted out over two years ago. Of the other ten men who were a part of that case, eight of them have reached plea agreements with the U. S. Department of Justice and received significant monetary fines and jail time. One of those men who hasn’t yet to receive his sentence (but has also introduced a guilty plea) is former Full Tilt Poker Chief Executive Officer Ray Bitar, who is reportedly in deteriorating health. The other man named in the indictment, Absolute Poker founder Scott Tom, is also still at large and believed to be living in the Caribbean but unable to travel due to the potential of being apprehended by a U. S. extradition-favorable government.
PokerStars actually settled their case with the DoJ last year for a whopping sum of $731 million (which also included the purchase of Full Tilt Poker) and, as a part of that settlement, ejected Scheinberg as the CEO of the company. Reports have been rampant that, even though his son, Mark, was put in charge of the new Rational Group (the organization that now oversees both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker), Isai Scheinberg was still very much involved with the operations of the company and their efforts to get back into the U. S. market.
Following the settlement, there were allegedly overtures from Caesars Entertainment about selling the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino and the rights to the World Series of Poker to the Rational Group. Nevada laws regarding online gaming, though, have a “bad actor” clause in their regulations (that clause prevents any organization that offered online gaming to U. S. customers following the enactment of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 from acquiring a license for five years) that would have prevented the Rational Group and PokerStars from opening up an online poker operation. Both sides have been silent as to the legitimacy of those discussions.
In December 2012, however, PokerStars believed they had found their pathway back into the U. S. market. With online gaming legislation brewing in the New Jersey legislature, the Rational Group offered $50 million for The Atlantic Club, one of the twelve casinos in Atlantic City that would provide the base for the New Jersey online gaming operations. That deal, however, fell through during the spring (and after the passage of online gaming legislation in New Jersey) when PokerStars was unable to get a temporary license for operations, in part due to objections from the American Gaming Association.
In their brief filed with New Jersey gaming officials in March, the AGA alleged that “the integrity of the gaming industry would be gravely compromised by any regulatory approvals of PokerStars, a business build on deceit, chicanery and the systematic flouting of U. S. law. New Jersey’s law and regulatory tradition mandate denial of this petition.”
Following the collapse of the Atlantic Club deal, PokerStars joined forces with Resorts International in a second attempt to enter into the New Jersey gaming scene. In October, New Jersey State Senator Ray Lesniak stated that he was “confident” of PokerStars’ involvement in the November launch of the New Jersey online gaming industry. “The biggest and the bestest with the mostest is going to have a presence here in New Jersey,” Lesniak (who was one of the main drivers of online gaming regulation in the state) said in the middle of the month.
Alas, it appears that, if the rumors are true, then PokerStars has once again been denied their reentry into the U. S. marketplace.
So much bullshit! All over the world people can make money and play poker online improving there game but here in the USA the continue to screw us over instead of finding a solution. Don’t they realize it can help the economy
I’m a grown man who wants to cry. I miss playing on PokerStars so much. The land of the free??…My ass
They don’t care, I’m now convince they care more about making our lives a living hell, instead of money, it feels good more than money pissing the people off, then make money off them
All about money. AGA knows that they cannot compete with Pokerstars and tries with all means to prevent the approval of Pokerstars. AGA does it not for the interest of the poker players. Online poker in NJ without Pokerstars will go no where like Golf without Tiger Wơods. NJ online poker would not survive after the first anniversary of fêes collection.