Epassporte reportedly pulling the plug on US poker players - updated
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What started off as a rumor yesterday now appears to be fact, at least for the time being - e-wallet provider Epassporte has closed its doors to US players.
The story broke yesterday in a thread over at 2+2. Original post excerpt:
Apparently, epassporte has pulled the plug on US poker players, effective 1:00 pm PDT this afternoon.
Whole thread here. The poster, nic MiltonFriedman, declined to identify his source.
In the only confirmation of the shutdown so far, Cake Poker sent the following email to customers, essentially confirming that epassporte is abandoning the online poker market for the time being:
To all Cake Poker Customers:
We have received notice from ePassporte today that they are unable to continue to provide CakePoker with merchant e-wallet services. We have since confirmed that this situation is not unique to CakePoker and is, in fact, industry wide.
While we are disappointed with this decision, we want to reassure all players that there will be no impact to either your account balances or your account status at Cake. We are pleased to have launched earlier this week with a new payment processor and have already secured alternative processors/eWallets that we will be launching in the weeks to come. We are also in discussions with other providers that will be making their services available in the CakePoker cashier soon. Players are welcome to inquire with Customer Support for more details.
Gambling 911 ran a story with excerpts from an epassporte ’statement’ that we were unable to locate the full text of. Here’s a bit of that, for whatever it’s worth:
ePassporte’s sudden shut down is a result of what company representatives called “a widespread investigation of Internet gambling, including poker” by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Southern New York. That is the same district that investigated an ultimately indicted 21 online gambling operators back in 1998.
“Although we do not believe we have done anything illegal, we do not wish to be associated with anything that might be considered illegal by the United States Government,” a statement issued by ePassporte read.
Again, we weren’t able to verify that statement of locate a complete copy of the original text.
Oddly, Epassporte support is still apparently telling users that the situation is a technical glitch and that the company has no plans to leave the US online poker market.
