For many months now, especially since the Black Friday indictments, Australian payment processor Daniel Tzvetkoff has been suggested as the key informant and likely key witness if the U.S. Government goes to court against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and UltimateBet. He provided the most damning information that allowed the DOJ to eventually shut down the online poker rooms.
The history is an interesting one because it was the online poker rooms that tipped the U.S. government to his whereabouts. When Tzvetkoff stiffed Full Tilt Poker on some payments, in an effort to collect them, they informed U.S. authorities that Tzvetkoff could be found at a trade show in Las Vegas. Tzvetkoff was arrested and charged with laundering up to $500 million through his companies. He was then reputed to have offered so much damning evidence of online poker illegality that they cult a deal with him during his incarceration. Then, he disappeared in U.S. custody shortly before Black Friday, suspiciously confirming some link between the two events.
At the height of his payment processing businesses, Tzvetkoff was estimated to be worth $A82 million and paid $A27 million for a home on the swank Australian Gold Coast. Before his disappearance, he had spent four months in jails in Las Vegas and New York. U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons now show that he was released on August 23, 2010. The US Department of Justice has refused to comment on Tzvetkoff’s whereabouts.
The poker rooms must rue the day they decided to turn him in, as Tzvetkoff likely supplied enough inside information to finally nail the online poker sites. They will not want to see him in court.
