I was listening to the QuadJacks stream earlier today and they kept bringing up this question and I have received a few emails asking the same thing. I don’t have any contacts at the DOJ but as far as I can tell it has to do with the fact that the indictment and banning from the US has more to do with the money laundering and bank fraud and very little to do with the UIGEA violations. Will the DOJ come after Bodog or any of the other sites still offering US gaming? Probably if they get too big. Right now they’re small fish. If any significant US traffic starts over there then they’ll come up on the crosshairs. And the more customers they take on the harder it will be for them to process transactions which is why Stars and Tilt and UB allegedly had to resort to illegal means to get money to and from customers.
I also get asked about whether or not I feel it’s safe to play on Bodog or Cake or Merge or . . . whoever. I can’t really give anyone advice on this other than to say that I personally don’t feel they’re any safer or riskier than they were a week ago. The DOJ can come down on anybody at any time.
As for whether or not your money is safe, I was never one to keep a lot of extra money on any of the poker sites. If I don’t need it to play then I take it off the site. That’s just a habit I picked up after the whole Neteller fiasco. I can’t believe it when people talk about having hundreds of thousands sitting on Stars or Tilt. Why?
So in summary, at the moment, presumably none of the other US facing rooms have engaged in money laundering or bank fraud or the DOJ doesn’t have enough evidence to gain an indictment. I think that if they were even close to getting an indictment they would have waited and brought down the hammer on everyone at the same time instead of giving the smaller guys time to protect themselves.
If you practice good bankroll management and keep your exposure to seizure low by not keeping a substantial sum on the sites then your risk of having funds seized probably isn’t greater or less than what it was last week.