This Friday marks the fifth anniversary of the most memorable Friday in many poker players' memories — Black Friday, or the day everything changed as far as online poker in the United States is concerned.

On September 29th Full Tilt Poker has their already suspended license with AGCC officially revoked, but by no means would this be the end of the Full Tilt Poker scandal. Shortly after having their license revoked, a deal between Full Tilt Poker and French Bernard Tapie. Sep 27, 2011 Tom 'durrr' Dwan Talks with Fox-News about the recent develoments about the DoJ calling Full Tilt Poker a ponzi scheme. Jun 12, 2016 Chris Ferguson was on the board at Full Tilt Poker but no one really knows how involved or complicit he was in the decisions that led to the massive shortfall in player funds. One thing that's all too clear is the hugely negative impact the events had on Full Tilt's former customers' lives.

On that day — April 15, 2011 — the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a 52-page indictment against top executives of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker, as well as a civil complaint against those companies. Those named in the indictment faced years in prison while the civil complaint sought $3 billion in assets from the sites. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker immediately stopped serving U.S. players, with Absolute Poker and its sister site UltimateBet (of the Cereus Network) following suit afterwards.

Here's a look back to what things were like before Black Friday as well as some of what has happened over the last five years as a result of the events of that day.

Before Black Friday

The story of Black Friday is long and complicated, stretching back in part to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that was signed into law by then President George W. Bush in October 2006. Lucky eagle casino holiday bazaar. While not specifically prohibiting American players from playing online poker, the UIGEA did outlaw businesses from transferring funds to and from gambling sites. Final regulations weren’t formulated until November 2008 and didn't go into effect until Jan. 19, 2009 (the last full day of of Bush's presidency). Compliance wasn't required until December 2009, however, with another bill later introduced that would delay the requirement to begin complying to June 1, 2010.

While some sites responded to the passage of the UIGEA by pulling out of the U.S., others continued to allow Americans to deposit, withdraw, and play, with PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet the most popular among U.S. players.

When Black Friday dawned, the poker world continued along as normal. According to the tracking site PokerScout, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker continued their status as the top two sites in terms of traffic by a healthy margin, with partypoker and the iPoker Network battling back and forth as the next two in line and the Cereus Network hovering inside the top 10.

The PokerStars-sponsored North American Poker Tour Mohegan Sun festival had just concluded a couple of days earlier, and the poker world was still buzzing about Vanessa Selbst and Jason Mercier each pulling off back-to-back victories in Uncasville, with Selbst repeating as NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event winner and Mercier winning the High Roller Bounty Shootout there as he had done the previous year. Meanwhile the NAPT — then moving through its Season 2 — was planning ahead for more U.S. stops.

Speaking of planning ahead, online poker bills were a hot topic with many states considering such legislation and there having been a lot of focus on a possible federal bill during the lame duck session that closed 2010. Alliances had begun to be appear between the big sites and brick-and-mortar groups, including one between Fertitta Interactive (owners of Station Casinos) and Full Tilt Poker and another recently publicized one between Wynn Resorts and PokerStars. Such 'joint ventures' were contigent on future, favorable legislation in the U.S. regarding online poker, and had everyone starting to wonder what might happen next.

The poker world was further occupied by the second installment of the 'durrrr' Challenge between Tom Dwan and Daniel 'Jungleman' Cates, which had been intermittently providing excitement over the previous seven-plus months. Just a few months before at the end of 2010, Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth had ended long tenures as UltimateBet-sponsored pros. The remaining representatives of Cereus Network sites were fending off ongoing questions about earlier scandals, with Joe Sebok and Prahlad Friedman — who surprisingly signed on as a UltimateBet sponsored pro in January 2011 after having been cheated on the site before — doing what they could to convince players to deposit on the new 'UB.'

Televised poker shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark had never been more popular. With that season of High Stakes Poker sponsored by PokerStars and Poker After Dark continuing to be sponsored by Full Tilt Poker, tensions rose regarding a site's sponsored pros being allowed to appear on the other site’s show, an issue that seemed at the time like a problem that mattered a lot to players and viewers alike.

Priorities were about to change in a big way.

April 15, 2011: The Lights Go Out

It was early afternoon on the East Coast and not quite lunch time out West when the first reports of the indictment and civil complaint began to circulate. Not only were the sites charged with violating the UIGEA, but additional charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling helped clarify the gravity of the situation, as did restraining orders against 75 bank accounts used by the sites and the seizure of five related domain names.

That morning two of the 11 defendents named in the indictment — John Campos (part-owner of an involved bank) and Chad Elie (payment processor) — were arrested, with another, Bradley Franzen (also a payment processor), having indicated an intention to turn himself in early the following week. The other eight defendants — Isai Scheinberg (PokerStars founder), Ray Bitar (CEO of Tiltware), Scott Tom (part-owner of Absolute Poker), Brent Beckley (payments director at AP), Nelson Burtnick (payments director at Tiltware), Paul Tate (payments director at PokerStars), Ryan Lang (payment processor), and Ira Rubin (payment processor) — were all outside the U.S.

Players visiting the sites' dot-coms were greeted with ominous-looking seizure notices appearing under the FBI and DOJ seals. By mid-afternoon PokerStars had blocked U.S. players from real-money games, with Full Tilt Poker doing so a few hours later. Soon after that a spokesperson from Feritta announced its partnership with Full Tilt Poker had already expired, while the Associated Press reported Wynn Resorts had likewise ended its alliance with PokerStars.

That evening both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker issued statements explaining that while U.S. players were shut out, it was business as usual for those playing from other countries. 'Please be assured player balances are safe,' added PokerStars in its statement. By contrast, Absolute Poker and UB both remained silent on the matter, with U.S. players in fact able to continue to play on their sites.

April 16, 2011: Anybody Remember the Onyx Cup?

The next day, Full Tilt Poker announced the cancellation of the Onyx Cup, a six-event series of high-stakes tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $100,000 to $300,000 that had just been introduced a month before.

ESPN jettisoned all poker-related ads from its site, and soon would announce it had cancelled all of its planned-for coverage of NAPT events, with PokerStars likewise announcing the cancellation of the tour.

April 18, 2011: Court Dates and Cancellations

On the following Monday, Franzen surrended to authorities in New York and was released on bail, with Elie and Campos likewise released following initial court appearances.

On that day it was also confirmed that the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge and PokerStars.net Big Game had both been cancelled.

April 20, 2011: The Dot-Coms Return

PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker both regained their dot-com domain names after striking deals with the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, a development that encouraged

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