PokerStars and its parent company Amaya Gaming recently sent out a message to their New Jersey players who had accounts prior to Black Friday asking them to please cash out as soon as possible.
In an e-mail that went out out on Thursday night, the company told the group of hard luck players that the time has finally come to put Black Friday to rest and cash out once and for all.
The targeted players fall into a very narrow group of pre-Black Friday players who live in New Jersey but still haven’t withdrawn their returned cash from their old accounts.
According to published reports, there’s right around $428,000 in unclaimed cash in the ghost town accounts. Any of that money that isn’t withdrawn by the end of the year will be forwarded to New Jersey’s Unclaimed Property Department.
So why is PokerStars so eager to see good New Jersey money flying out its coffers? It all has to with Amaya Gaming’s Herculean efforts to get on the right side of the New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement. (A task which they’ve plowed through with admirable success.)
PokerStars is eager to purge itself of any association with the bad old days and said as much in the e-mail:
As we recently have received approval in New Jersey and anticipate beginning to offer real-money online gaming soon, we wanted to provide you with the opportunity to obtain the funds.
PokerStars is also asking players who don’t want to bother cashing in smaller amounts to donate that cash to a fund that benefits problem gamblers.