Since deciding to leave the US market after their main payment processor ran afoul of the US Government, the Everleaf Poker Network has issued their first public statement on the matter, clarifying precisely what occurred, and why US players have yet to receive their account balances.

In October, A seizure order was issued by the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington that called for authorities to seize all transactions (ingoing and outgoing) for 14 days by Causash Establishment, the Everleaf Poker Network’s main US payment processor. What this means is that the US Government has seized not only 14 days of player withdrawals, but also 14 days of deposits that went through this median.

While never explicitly saying how much money was seized, or when the Network will be able to repay the debts, the Everleaf Poker Network was very clear that they intend to repay all players in FULL, and that all players waiting for their payments will be contacted in the near future –let’s hope that the Everleaf Poker Network was run better than Full Tilt Poker, as the cases are strikingly similar.

Here is a look at the press release issued by the Everleaf Poker Network:

“As has been reported, certain funds maintained by one of our payment processors to be distributed to U.S. customers were seized by U.S. authorities. To our knowledge, the U.S. authorities seized these funds and blocked the transactions based on purported violations of certain U.S. laws, including operating an illegal money transmitting business, the Wire Act, and money laundering. Evidence relative to the subject can be reviewed from the attached papers.

“Please be advised that this seizure occurred in the United States and only affects U.S. players.

“In view of the above, Everleaf will no longer accept U.S. players. Nonetheless, Everleaf reiterates and wants to reassure all the effected players that all the funds will be refunded in full and the effected parties will be contacted in a short while accordingly.

“For the other markets we operate in and with regards to all our other players we want to reassure you that nothing has changed and thank you for the continued business with our Company.

“We sincerely apologize for the lack of communication to date, but as a Company we were still trying to find our feet and assessing the situation at hand and how to best protect the interest of all the effected parties.”

Since leaving the US market, Everleaf has seen their peak traffic dip from highs between 700 and 800 players, down to highs ranging from 600 to 700 players, with a downward trend, according to the online poker traffic tracking site pokerscout.com.

Should the network repay their debts to US players in a timely fashion it’s quite likely that traffic will increase at the network, as they will have shown to be a reliable online poker site –something that is still a question mark for any online poker site that hasn’t yet gone through a similar situation. Thus far only PokerStars has earned the right to be called a safe and secure online poker room.

Tags: Account Balances, Authorities, Debts, Full tilt Poker, How Much Money, Illegal Money, Money Laundering, Network Processor, Payment Processor, Payment Processors, Player Withdrawals, Poker Network, Press Release, Seizure, Us Government, Western District Of Washington, What This Means, Wire Act

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2012 at 8:29 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.