It was something that everyone could see coming. In fact, it was something that would be been surprising if it didn’t transpire, but now that it is here it is still just as unpleasant as anyone could have ever conceived.

The United States Government, in particular the United States Attorney for the Southern District of the State of New York, has started to go after the funds of online poker, seizing over $30 million in their first attempt. This represents the first directly aggressive action by the government against the online poker community, as the UIGEA was an indirect attempt to ban online gambling. Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars, two entities in online poker that decided to stay in the United States, have been directly targeted by the government and that means that the battle lines have been joined and are not going to go away even with the election of a Democratic administration within the United States.

According to the aggressors, the reason the funds were confiscated was that the operations were violating two pieces of legislation. The first is the Wire Act of 1961 and the second is the Illegal Gambling Business Act. According to a representative for the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the main advocate for poker in the country, both of those are very shaky legal claims as those pieces of legislation were introduced in order to help deal with sports betting. Considering that even the regional government considers sports betting to be legal, the PPA feels as though the attorney’s office has grossly overstepped their bounds in this matter.

The main player on the side of the government appears to be the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of the State of New York. The person’s name is Arlo Devlin-Brown and it looks as though he was essentially the one spearheading the operation to move forward. Much to his chagrin however, poker players that found bounced checks as a result of the seizure were fully reimbursed (and more in some cases) by Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars, showing the inherent honesty of those companies.