Several sources seem to be reporting that Full Tilt and PokerStars have come to a legal agreement with the DOJ that gives the poker rooms back the use of their .com domains. They will only be able to use the .com addresses in conjunction with allowing US players to seek cashouts. They will not be allowed to offer online gaming on the .com sites and are still effectively barred from the US.
U.S. Online Poker Players Will Get Their Money Back
UNITED STATES ENTERS DOMAIN-NAME USE AGREEMENTS WITH TWO ONLINE POKER COMPANIES
Full Tilt and PokerStars regain .com Domain Names and Player Money is Safe
Now, that being said, this may not mean that you get your money back immediately. If you read the DOJ press release and the PokerNews article which quotes a Full Tilt press release above you already start to see a difference in how they are portraying this news. The DOJ paints a picture that they can turn it on immediately. However the Full Tilt statement hedges a bit.
I can only assume that it is one or more of the following reasons:
1. Full Tilt has no clue what money is what
2. Full Tilt did not segregate player funds at the individual levels
3. Full Tilt isn’t sure of the exact state of previous payments
4. They still don’t have banking arrangements set up that will allow them to transfer money to US residents
Either way, it’s just a matter of when and not if you will get your money back. I’m sure these companies are both scrambling as quickly as they can and I know from doing a US shutdown at Party that this is a very crazy time and information is constantly changing.
From the info I’m getting both sites are planning on cashing out your tournament dollars and points which is just the right thing to do.
It seems that the Man license require different accounts for players funds. Instead, Alderney license permits the licensee to have every money mixed.
Now that they are talking, rather than pointing fingers, wouldn’t it be nice if the Gov allowed the sites to return the money to the senders via the normal bank transfer (one way, inbound), as a first step to “normalization” of “regulated” banking practices.