Berkley to Dispose of Full Tilt Poker’s Campaign Contributions
Representative Shelly Berkley of Nevada, who is widely acclaimed for his support of the legalization and regulation of the US online poker industry in the US, had accepted around $20,000 from Full Tilt Poker as the latter’s contributions for his election campaign.
US Senate campaign spokesperson for Berkley, Jessica Mackler, has stated in an email that these funds would be disposed of at the earliest possible although she makes no mention of exactly how they would be disposed.
Stating that the allegations against Full Tilt Poker, its top players, and its owners and executive members are “extremely troubling,” she said that the activities of a few individuals in Full Tilt Poker are now threatening to tarnish the reputation of the online poker gaming community, if the allegations are proved to be true.
Even Barney Frank, another staunch advocate of legalizing US online poker, who bears the credit of introducing a number of bills to legalize online poker, has received around $18,600 from Full Tilt Poker as election campaign contributions.
Newspaper reports state that Frank and Berkley have received the highest amounts of money as election contributions from Full Tilt Poker.
The US Department of Justice had seized the domain names of Full Tilt Poker, along with PokerStars and Absolute Poker, on April 15 this year, a day commonly referred to as the Black Friday for online poker by the poker gaming community. Later, the DoJ indicted the online gaming company with nine charges including bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling. This Tuesday, the DoJ amended its complaint and added that Full Tilt Poker was running a Ponzi scheme, cheating players of over $443 million.
Full Tilt Poker pros Lederer, Rafael Furst, and Ferguson, who are also mentioned in the US government’s indictment, have contributed around $200k for the election campaigns of Congressmen, from 2007.
