There aren’t too many times when the US government comes a-knocking and you benefit financially from the encounter. We all know that the United States government, for those of us living here in the US, will get a hold of you in a hurry if you owe them money, but isn’t too experienced in giving money away. So it is understandable if the United States Department of Justice has decided to ask for help when they have $159 million to hand back to former Full Tilt Poker account holders who may have been “potential US victims” of the online poker company which was recently bought out by PokerStars. In a three-way agreement, the US DOJ requires PokerStars to pay back all the money owed to those account holders who lost money in the Full Tilt Poker scandal as part of buying that company. This will hopefully get the ball rolling in an effort to reimburse Full Tilt players whose accounts were frozen in April of 2011 on what has come to be known as Black Friday in the online poker community.

Late last week the DOJ posted an employment opportunity on its website for a position as a “third party claims administrator” who would facilitate the return of monies to disgruntled Full Tilt account owners here in the United States. Their investigation led the Department of Justice to announce that as many as 1.3 million US Full Tilt account holders were possible victims. As part of the above-mentioned three-way deal between the DOJ, PokerStars and Full Tilt, PokerStars agreed to pay $547 million to cover legal fines and player restitution before they were able to fold the Full Tilt Poker online poker operation under their wings. As you can imagine, locating that many people is going to be rather daunting. If time was not a problem, PokerStars could take the cheaper route and simply advertise on a couple of websites that they were reimbursing wronged US Full Tilt players.

But the DOJ is pushing forward to get this handled as quickly as possible, and put a deadline on the claims administrator position application process of September 1. Jeff Ifrah is an attorney for Full Tilt who was an integral part of brokering the deal between the three parties, and he says the goal for all three parties concerned is to get this handled as quickly as possible. Obviously, whatever company receives the claims administrator contract will have their hands full. The Department of Justice expects them to handle every step of the player reimbursement process including designing and implementing a method for soliciting, verifying and paying potential US victims.

This will obviously require close work with Full Tilt Poker representatives, as verification of financial transaction records and Full Tilt Poker account information will have to be scrutinized. And as you can imagine, any time the United States government is involved, it’s going to cost you. If you have any monies owed by Full Tilt Poker, you’ll be expected to pay an application and processing fee that will pay the reimbursement claims administrator so none of the frozen Full Tilt account money will be diminished. Also, the application process requires potential payees to disclose any prior relationships with other online poker sites or gambling companies. The Full Tilt company itself is handling all player reimbursements from outside the United States.

After the crushing legal accusations, indictments and door shutting process of the largest online poker rooms in the United States back in April of 2011, PokerStars rapidly cashed out their US players with the blessing and permission of the Department of Justice. That gave PokerStars an undying “thank you” from those US account holders, and improved an already solid reputation as an online poker room with an extremely high level of integrity. Poker professional Greg Raymer serves on the Poker Players Alliance Board of Directors, a poker-centered lobbying group based in Washington DC, and he stated that the PPA is happy to help the DOJ in any way, so that the entire process “is fair and quick.” This is obviously great news for online poker as a whole, and even greater news for US players with Full Tilt Poker account balances.

Learn more about the high quality online poker rooms that were not affected by the DOJ take over:  Poker Room Reviews by ThePokerGrind.com