Unconfirmed rumor regarding Chexx Inc

[I.Rowboat]

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who does bodog use?

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They use a service other than Chexx, but I can't see how posting the name would be a good idea.

[Fat Nicky]

hopefully the sites that use chexx inc were aware of a pending pullout of US marker in advance and have taken the appropriate measures to get a new processor...i know, wishful thinking

[augie_]

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hopefully the sites that use chexx inc were aware of a pending pullout of US marker in advance and have taken the appropriate measures to get a new processor...i know, wishful thinking

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yeah, right. that's the reason stars hasn't been on the forum in a month. if they were to be honest with their players and give them the best possible advice, they would say "GET YOUR MONEY OUT NOW!!!!"

but obviously that's not in their best interests.

[gila]

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Why are you all panicking? Chexx is not a bank. Its a company who specializing ni providing check writing services for people who need to write checks in large quantities. If this is true, then Stars gets a new company or starts writing out the checks themselves. More costly, but not the end of the world.

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Yea, all good and well, except for the ones of us that have thousands coming via a chexx check. That can be a little troubling.

[Rigel]

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If this is true, then Stars gets a new company or starts writing out the checks themselves. More costly, but not the end of the world.

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Hopefully that's the case. But it certainly won't inspire confidence in online poker for some of the biggest poker sites to literally have NO way to give your money back to you, for however long it takes. And who knows how long it will take them to find another check processor? I expect Chexx is giving up a huge amount of money by taking this action, so it's obvious they felt a serious legal threat existed.

It's not time to panic, but this moves thing up a notch on the seriousness scale.

[fsuplayer]

does anybody know if a canadian or carribean bank would accept these checks? im thinking about opening a new account in one of those places for this reason.

[WichitaDM]

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Why are you all panicking? Chexx is not a bank. Its a company who specializing ni providing check writing services for people who need to write checks in large quantities. If this is true, then Stars gets a new company or starts writing out the checks themselves. More costly, but not the end of the world.

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I think there are three reasons people are panicking.

1)Many of us have relatively large quantities of money in transfer from poker sites with checks that may not be cashable or depositable by the time we get them
----1a)This leads to uncertainty as to whether or not we ever see the funds from the withdraws we have made in the last week

2)There are no viable withdraw methods available anymore if checks are not an option for the time being...EPassporte is a pain in the ass, i just got my small deposits....14 days later. So for those of us who play for a living, and unfortunately(stupidly) have a large amount of money in the sites this puts one more nail in our coffin...

3) This is just one more step toward the perfect storm scenerio that destroys online poker for the US. We are now dangerously close to having no ways to get money to and from sites. If a few more options close to us then we are dead. The sites while promising to work on new options has not released any in the two weeks following the neteller debacle.


While i am not panicking, i am worried about the checks i have in transit. I have faith that the sites that have decided to keep serving us, PS, FT, UB, AP, can work something out. However each day that goes by our situation gets bleaker and bleaker, and this is prior to any of the recent bills regulations kicking in. I think in the sites find a way to circumvent the law, hopefully it will be in time.

[Rigel]

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We are now dangerously close to having no ways to get money to and from sites.


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From, yes. But AFAIK no one will ever be able to stop you from going to the local convenience store and getting a money order to "John Rodriguez" from Costa Rica.

But clearly, a way to get money back is needed as well for those of you who expect to make money off poker. I checked my records on Full Tilt and I've deposited $1000 over the last several months and I have $960 remaining. The trend is upwards in the last month as I've gotten better, but I never envision making significant money from poker. So it's basically just cheap entertainment for me and I'll be happy to just let my money sit there indefinitely.

I hope that sites like Full Tilt will stick around for us Americans who want to do just like I'm doing and churn the funds I already have deposited.

For the "pros" out there I saw a reference to sites getting foreign checking accounts for their VIP customers. That seems to be something the US government could never stop. The poker site wires the money to your foreign account in the Caymans, you check your account online to be satisfied it's safe, and if you need it, wire it from your Cayman's bank to your bank in the US. Your bank in the US will never know where the money came from.

[HSB]

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1)Many of us have relatively large quantities of money in transfer from poker sites with checks that may not be cashable or depositable by the time we get them
----1a)This leads to uncertainty as to whether or not we ever see the funds from the withdraws we have made in the last week

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Chexx pulling out of the US market should have zero impact on whether the checks they send before that are cashable. All Chexx is really doing is printing the checks. The money doesn’t belong to Chexx and the account number on the check probably doesn’t belong to Chexx.

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2)There are no viable withdraw methods available anymore if checks are not an option for the time being...EPassporte is a pain in the ass, i just got my small deposits....14 days later. So for those of us who play for a living, and unfortunately(stupidly) have a large amount of money in the sites this puts one more nail in our coffin...

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It’s not a nail in anyone’s coffin. It’s a pain in the ass like everyone in every industry has to deal with. FTP says they may be able to get their new payment processor up tonight. I’m sure every site is doing everything they can to get payment processors up as quickly as humanly possible. If you have your money on a trustworthy site you will be able to get at it as soon as the site can make that possible. Remember that they want to get things back to normal even more than you do.

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3) This is just one more step toward the perfect storm scenerio that destroys online poker for the US. We are now dangerously close to having no ways to get money to and from sites. If a few more options close to us then we are dead. The sites while promising to work on new options has not released any in the two weeks following the neteller debacle.

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Do you think you can get a payment processor up in two weeks? Hell no. Even if the contract were negotiated in the first second after the neteller pullout, there’s an interface between the two computer systems that has to be designed and tested. There’s going to be hundreds of millions, probably billions of dollars flowing through that interface so they cannot cut any corners or speed anything up and they are not—if they are competent—going to go forward until they are absolutely certain it works properly. It takes time.

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While i am not panicking, i am worried about the checks i have in transit. I have faith that the sites that have decided to keep serving us, PS, FT, UB, AP, can work something out. However each day that goes by our situation gets bleaker and bleaker, and this is prior to any of the recent bills regulations kicking in. I think in the sites find a way to circumvent the law, hopefully it will be in time.

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But it doesn’t get bleaker and bleaker. All the changes that the sites were preparing to make in response to the bank regulations now have to be made immediately. If they had the time they expected to have you’d never have known about this at all, you’d just have had to switch payment processors when the regs came out. The situation isn’t getting any worse in regards to your money. In fact, each day the sites are making more and more progress on getting their new payment processors up.

It sucks that we have to wait but that’s all this is, waiting. It’s not sinking.

[NoSoup4U]

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Why are you all panicking? Chexx is not a bank. Its a company who specializing ni providing check writing services for people who need to write checks in large quantities. If this is true, then Stars gets a new company or starts writing out the checks themselves. More costly, but not the end of the world.

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Stars cannot simply open a US bank account and generate their own checks. Their funds would be seized almost immediately. This happened a while back with all the advertising money that the poker sites spent. The sites had to jump through a number of hoops to get their commercial money spent. This represents another choke point (like EFT processors) that the government can pressure. I assume that someone from DoJ threatened Chexx by telling them that they believed accepting money from and processing checks for a poker site was considered money laundering by the DoJ and that it might expose them to criminal prosecution. They may well have broadcast this message through industry associations so that no other check processor wants to do business with them either.

It would be possible for Neteller or Stars to issue checks from foreign banks, but those kinds of checks are often subjected to lengthy holds and increased difficulty in getting them cashed. If they are written in foreign currencies, they are especially painful to get cashed.