NEW YORK, June 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department has ordered banks to freeze the accounts of payment processors handling the bets of online poker players, documents indicate.
Letters from federal officials to John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, indicated that bank accounts held by payment processor Allied Systems Inc. have been frozen "because they constitute property involved in money-laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses," The New York Post reported Wednesday.
The newspaper said the move was the latest effort by the Justice Department in its ongoing legal fight against Internet gambling. Online gambling was banned in the United States in 2006.
Pappas reportedly said in a response sent to Assistant U.S. District Attorney Arlo Devlin Brown that his non-profit poker advocacy group "will pursue every legal course available to ensure that poker players' funds are not seized and their right to play poker online is protected."
