More than 7,400 former Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet customers will be made whole, a recent announcement on the Absolute Poker Claims site reads. Players of the two online gambling brands will be returned nearly $33.5 million, after the process was approved by the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section of the US Department of Justice.
The money will finally be returned to their rightful owners more than six years after owners of the two gambling websites were indicted by the DoJ for neglecting the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, introduced in the US back in 2006 and prohibiting the provision of online gaming services to players from within the States.
It was on April 15, 2011, a date dubbed Black Friday of online poker, when the DoJ unsealed the above-mentioned indictment. Owners and executives of the PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker brands were also involved in the legal process.
All of the above-mentioned gambling brands stopped operating in the US shortly after. However, the issue of who would return Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet’s customers their blocked funds and how these funds would be returned has remained unsolved since then.
In 2012, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker reached an agreement with the DoJ, for the former to cover expenses related to refunding the latter’s players whose money had been blocked.
The process was announced to have been completed earlier this year, with a total of 44,320 claimants for refunding being returned more than $118 million. The DoJ announced this spring that the remaining amount of approximately $45 million would be used for eligible Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet players to be compensated for their losses.
Affected customers were encouraged to submit their refund petitions to the above-mentioned website up until June 9, 2017. As seen from the recently posted announcement, around 7,500 petitions had been approved for refunding.
The Garden City Group is serving as the claims administrator for the Absolute Poker petitions. The company had retained its function from the Full Tilt Poker refunding process.
The Absolute Poker Claims website also informs those who are yet to file their petitions that they will be able to do so by September 7. Eligible claimants will thus be repaid from the remaining $10 million-plus, yet to be approved by the DoJ’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section.
Back in February, one of Absolute Poker’s founders – Scott Tom – returned to the US to stand trial. He faced several charges, to which he pleaded not guilty and was released on a $500,000 bail. In late May, the businessman pleaded guilty to a single charge, admitting to providing illegal online gambling services to US players. Tom’s exact sentence is yet to be announced. It is believed that this will happen in late-September.
