[StellarWind]

Forbes magazine did a feature story a few months back about a similar non-gaming prosecution.

Many of you may have seen a TV ad campaign involving a dork named "Bob" who has a permanent ridiculous smile because he used a bogus "male enhancement" product called Enzyte produced by Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals.

The Feds went after BPN and its owner and the Governemnt didn't bother trying to prove the product was a crock. Seems the chargeback rates on their credit card sales were very high and their banks tried to terminate their merchant accounts for business reasons. BPN resorted to a variety of schemes to keep credit card sales flowing by deceiving the banks about who they were and what they were selling.

That's fraud and now they are in big trouble even though no one is claiming in court that their product or advertising is illegal. If the underlying product or service is illegal that would just make things worse.

Banks have a right to say they don't want to extend credit to fund online poker. Poker players should be free to play but equally bankers should have the freedom to not risk their money on it. The guys running these fraudulent credit card processing schemes are simply criminals who are inflicting real losses on the financial industry. I don't have any problem with the Government prosecuting them and I would hope that the online poker industry wouldn't be involved.