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ESPN's Twitter [3] revealed that Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars made an agreement with the US Attorney's Office to "facilitate return of U.S. player funds."
[4]Andrew Feldman, ESPN's poker editor tweeted not an hour ago:
"FTP makes deal with US Attorney's office to regain fulltiltpoker.com. Agreement expressly allows for real money play outside the US...."
"FTP also states in the press release that it's an important first step towards US players getting $$ back, but still faces legal impediments"
"Pokerstars.com gets domain back as well per agreement."
The mentioned press release [5] states what many U.S. players were hoping for: namely, that they will get their funds back from the poker companies:
"No individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained, and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to
reimburse any player's deposited funds. In fact, this Office expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players, as today’s agreements with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker demonstrate."
The press release stresses that Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are only allowed to use their original domains to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. players’ funds held in accounts with the companies and they by no means shall allow for, facilitate, or provide the abilitiy for player located in the United States to engage in playing online playing online poker for "real money" or any other thing of value.
Furthermore, a federal judge issued a restraining order against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries used by those online poker firms.