19/05/2011, Online casino

Daniel Negreanu has once again launched very harsh words for Ultimate Bet and for the way they are handling the situation after the Black Friday.

On April 15th, the US Department of Justice has charged PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Ultimate Bet with bank fraud, money laundering, wire fraud and illegal gambling offenses. American poker players were prevented from playing at the three online poker websites that were shut down immediately.

Five days later Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars have reached an agreement with the United States Department of Justice and allowed poker players to recover their funds. The DOJ has also stated that the two members of the CEREUS Network (Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet Poker) are allowed to enter the same agreement, but they didn't want to follow the PokerStars' and Full Tilt Poker's example. Moreover, the two members of the CEREUS Network continued to accept action from US players, but without allowing them to make any deposits, to transfer funds, or to cash out.

Daniel Negreanu stated he was proud of the way PokerStars has managed to handle the situation and expressed his disgust with the Ultimate Bet online poker room, commenting on his article:

“There is one thing that frustrates me to no end. It’s been a fight I’ve been fighting for a decade now, and I’m so very disappointed in how few top players would publicly join the fight with me. Privately, most are disgusted by UB, but publicly they’ve not said a word. As a poker community, we failed miserably when it comes to the AP/UB tragedy… We can cast blame on Paul Leggat and players representing the site, but there is plenty of blame to go around in our community. Plenty of media outlets took UB money and often sugar coated/glossed over the scandal(s). Very few people dodge blame here…

I mean that company is just an absolute joke! The owners (not past owners, same darn owners) cheated their customers, stole from their investors, and it looks like the last straw is that they will likely fold up like a cheap suit and run off with the rest of the customers money. Shame on them, but even more so, shame on us, the poker community, for allowing this to happen.”