Shock US news for Irish online poker gamblers

Whilst not specifically Irish casino news, the recent headlines concerning the world’s second biggest online poker operator, Full Tilt, serves as an important reminder to every online casino games player in the world that their choice of online casino site is paramount. Full Tilt was set up in 2004 during the online poker boom, along with publicly listed companies Party Gaming and 888, both well known and respected over here. All these sites were massively successful because they allowed online poker players to test their prowess against the best poker players in the world, but as we all know, in October 2006 the US government banned internet poker and in doing so effectively removed their biggest source of income. Party Gaming and 888 immediately stopped allowing US citizens from playing on their sites, but it appears that many of the privately owned online poker sites, including Full Tilt, continued to operate in spite of the ban and managed to hide their financial transactions behind front companies. Two weeks ago prosecutors in New York launched a civil claim against Full Tilt, and accused the company of paying huge dividends to its owners, whilst owing its customers as much as $390m and only having $60m in the bank. It now appears that many online poker gamblers all over the world have not been able to claim their winnings from this online casino operator, including customers on this side of the Atlantic, so at onlinecasino.ie we felt it was necessary to inform our readers  of what could turn out to be the worst casino news for Ireland since online casinos were established. We fervently hope that none of our readers have been victims of this alleged scandal, but it does stress the importance of taking advice when choosing an online casino and we hope that our continuous audits of the main online casino sites available to Irish gamblers will provide a useful pointer.