A lawsuit by the Commonwealth of Kentucky against PokerStars, “which seeks to collect tens of millions of dollars in alleged losses of Kentucky poker players while the online poker site operated in the Commonwealth… between 2006 and 2011,” according to the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), just got a little more crowded.
The PPA expects any funds derived from the lawsuit to go directly to the Commonwealth. As such, the PPA has joined the lawsuit. PPA Executive Director John Pappas commented in a press release, “This is a cynical big government money grab of private consumer dollars to pay for political excesses. This entire lawsuit is based on a long-shunned 19th Century sore loser statute, which is about as applicable today as the anti-dueling laws still on the books.”
The PPA chided, “The Commonwealth has spent countless resources and time figuring out how to extort money from online poker companies when they could have spent that time creating a safe and regulated market that would have raised equal or greater amounts of money to benefit the consumers and taxpayers of the Commonwealth both now and in the future. The affected players should be the ones who collect from this suit, not the government and certainly not the attorneys.”
Kentucky, of course, is home to the annual Kentucky Derby and is overly protective of its horse racing interests. The state formerly tried to seize the domain names belonging to hundreds of online poker and casino sites.
Eric Hollreiser, Vice President of Corporate Communications for PokerStars’ parent company Amaya Gaming, commented in a press release, “We welcome the intervention of the Poker Players Alliance to this suit and believe they represent the true interests of Kentucky residents and Kentucky poker players. While we do not believe the suit has merit and will continue to pursue the case in the courts, if there is a monetary judgment, it should go toward the consumers who played on PokerStars and not to line the pockets of opportunistic plaintiff’s attorneys.”
We’ll keep you posted on the latest.