It was revealed this week that a Maryland federal grand jury had indicted two more online gambling companies. News has spread fast of the affidavit from Maryland Homeland Security that charges two companies and their owners of operating an illegal online gambling business and money laundering.
The two companies, ThrillX Systems Ltd, run by David Parchomchuk and Darren Wright, and K23 Financial Services (BMX Entertainment) run by Ann Marie Puig have had bank accounts and domain names seized in a similar scenario to PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker back on April 15, which is now known as “Black Friday.”
Amongst the ten domain names seized are TruePoker.com and DoylesRoom.com, the latter being fronted by poker legend and 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Doyle Brunson until only last week. Both of these sites were on the Yatahay Network, a very small online poker network that only saw an average of 220 real money cash games players online at peak times.
Shortly after this was announced the Merge Network, who have continued to offer their services to American citizens, revealed that they were, with immediate effect, blocking French players from their skins and players from New York, Maryland, Missouri, Louisiana and the District of Columbia. As yet there has been no official press release from Merge Gaming on the reason for this sudden change of heart.
Another major player also made some changes in light of the recent indictments, the sports betting giant that is Bodog. Anyone trying to access Bodog.com is automatically redirected to Bodog.eu and then again to the site of the country they are accessing the site from. As of yet Bodog have not been the target of any action from the American Department of Justice (DoJ) and this move to the .eu domain means the DoJ will not be able to seize their domain if they do decide to attempt to prosecute them.
Although the billionaire founder of Bodog, Calvin Ayre, is uncharacteristically yet to comment on this move, BodogBrand, which is Bodog’s global brand owner and licensor, say the change in domain name has been in planning since December 2010 and the decision to switch on Monday was just a coincidence.
