WASHINGTON, DC – Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer today condemned the April 15 raids carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation against three major online poker sites and the indictments against 11 individuals involved with those sites that U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York unsealed.
“This makes no sense. The charges against the operators don’t even pass a laugh test,” said Lehrer, vice president for Washington, DC operations at Heartland.
“These companies operated legal, above-board poker facilities and they’re being shut down for money-laundering even though they did nothing of the sort,” Lehrer continued. “This is also deeply unfair since many people engaging in the perfectly legal activity of playing poker have now lost access to funds they had deposited or earned by playing. At minimum, the federal government needs to do right by the players and let them take their money out.”
Lehrer can be reached for further comment at 202-615-0586 or [email protected].
The Heartland Institute is a 27-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site at http://www.heartland.org or call 312/377-4000.
