In late breaking news on Thursday night, a PokerStars New Jersey gaming license will be temporarily denied for online.
According to Poker Player Newspaper, “three insiders” with direct knowledge of the ongoing procedures in the Garden State – and at least one of those insiders being from “the other side of the pond” – have said that the potential PokerStars partnership with Resorts International for the upcoming opening of the New Jersey gaming scene will be denied.
Poker Player Newspaper reports that the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is having “concerns” about the criminal case that is still plaguing the founder of the site, Isai Scheinberg, from the April 2011 indictments that crippled the U. S. online poker world.
Scheinberg, who was criminally indicted with 10 other men in the “Black Friday” case, has remained at large since those indictments were meted out over two years ago. Of the other ten men who were a part of that case, eight of them have reached plea agreements with the U. S. Department of Justice and received significant monetary fines and jail time.
One of those men who hasn’t yet to receive his sentence (but has also introduced a guilty plea) is former Full Tilt Poker Chief Executive Officer Ray Bitar, who is reportedly in deteriorating health. The other man named in the indictment, Absolute Poker founder Scott Tom, is also still at large and believed to be living in the Caribbean but unable to travel due to the potential of being apprehended by a U. S. extradition-favorable government.
PokerStars actually settled their case with the DoJ last year for a whopping sum of $731 million (which also included the purchase of Full Tilt Poker) and, as a part of that settlement, ejected Scheinberg as the CEO of the company. Reports have been rampant that, even though his son, Mark, was put in charge of the new Rational Group (the organization that now oversees both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker), Isai Scheinberg was still very much involved with the operations of the company and their efforts to get back into the U. S. market.
Read more on this topic at Poker News Daily.
