Federal Authorities Seize Online Gambling Processor E-Mail

October 30, 2009 | News Category: Gaming Law

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Not only did United States Federal authorities seize the bank accounts of online gambling patrons in connection with their investigation of the online cash processor, Electracash Inc., but they have now seized e-mails to and from the online payment processing company.

The Baltimore City Paper reported that the warrants issued for the e-mail seizure are new warrants, and not part of the original warrants that were issued earlier this year, in July, which was followed by the seizure of the bank accounts. The Feds are obviously looking for new information in order to find evidence against Electracash.

The Baltimore City Paper printed copies of the court orders that were relevant to the e-mail seizure case, and included the following comment in their report: "This time, the Feds are going after evidence of gambling-related communications in Electracash’s e-mail account with New York-based Intermedia."

The original affidavit’s sworn by law enforcement officers in order to get the warrants for the bank account seizures had been kept sealed, although the seal was later lifted after a lawsuit determined that there was no good reason to hide the information. The affidavit was sworn by Richard Gunn, a US Customs officer. Gunn had also applied for similar warrants in the past, to be used in an investigation of another payment processor, Forshay Enterprises.

The new warrants, used for the seizure of the online gambling processor’s e-mails, were signed by Judge James Bredar, a US District judge, earlier this month, on October 9th.

The original warrants that were issued in July were for the seizure of bank account which held payments to United States residents who had won money while playing online poker. It seems that the tactic being used by the US government with regards to seizing bank accounts for those suspected of using the accounts in connection with online gambling, is that the Feds seize the cash, and then hope that the owners of the money will come looking for it. However, it looks like the owners of the cash will not come looking for the money since it was likely used for online gambling processing bank accounts, and they would not risk having to appear in court to try and get their money back.

Electracash’s officials have been silent, issuing no comment on either the bank account seizures, or the e-mail seizures. There have been fruitless attempts to contact the attorneys for the payment processing company, and also D. Lee Falls, the CEO of Electracash, over the past few months.