Online Poker Site Helped Locate Osama Bin Laden?
After the recent assassination of terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the online poker community has been abuzz with the news about a possible link between Osama Bin Laden’s destruction and online poker. According to some news articles, Bin Laden’s assassination by US Special Forces is a result of information obtained from one of the three poker sites shut down during Black Friday.
On April 15th, three poker sites were shut down and more than 75 bank accounts used by them and their payment processors have been seized; also, the online properties of five different domain names were also taken over by the FBI.
Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda who had been avoiding the authorities for almost ten years, was largely believed to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York. The terrorist remained elusive until the 15th of April when the top three poker sites were indicted by the FBI on allegations of fraud.
News reports claim that information provided by an al-Qaeda operative led US authorities to find out about the identity of one of Bin Laden’s close associates and aides, who was an avid online poker player. Until last year, the US government had no idea as to the exact location of Bin Laden’s residence in Afghanistan – they only knew that he resided in a mansion somewhere in the region.
After the US authorities seized the domain names of the three top poker sites, they had access to player information and may have used this to trace the location of Bin Laden’s aide. This new source of information allegedly helped authorities to get a hold of the IP address and zero in on the location of where the terrorist was residing.
This is the current conspiracy theory circulating after Bin Laden’s death and although its credibility is still in question, the US online poker community cannot help but celebrate its association with this great victory.
