There’s just something not right about Absolute Poker. In the gambling community, many people have been wary about them for a while. First there was the cheating scandal, which some don’t think they handled well, and now the Black Friday indictments.

Whereas Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars quickly signed deals with the Justice Department to bring their domains back online and return funds to U.S. players, Absolute Poker did not. The other two companies have done a good job so far of returning deposits to American members; Absolute poker has not. Right or wrong, it seems that while the jury is not yet out on PokerStars and Full Tilt, Absolute Poker kind of seems dirty.

Of course, there is also the stuff with Blanca Gaming and Madeira Ford, who first was said to announce bankruptcy and an inability to repay investors but later denied it. According to some, Madiera Fjord was nothing more than a shell company. Word was that they were not going to make any payments toward their debt obligations to investors. American players who wanted their money back from Absolute Poker seemed equally screwed.

Then on May 4, Absolute Poker reached an agreement with the Justice Department. The deal allows them to return money to players, but does not allow them to “facilitate or provide the ability for palyers located in the United States to engage in playing poker for ‘real money’ or any other thing of value.”

A recent investigation, though, indicates that they are still accepting real-money bets from American players. Pokerscout reported that residents in many U.S. cities – including Chicago, Cincinnati, Colorado Springs and Bakersfield – have been confirmed to still be gambling for real money. It seems that if U.S. players downloaded the Absolute Poker software before Black Friday, they are still able to access the software to play real-money games and the company is allowing it.

While some are cheering them on for “sticking it to the man,” I disagree. Running an online poker business in America is not illegal, but doing so when you signed an agreement with the DOJ saying you would not is against the law. This could lead to further legal problems for the company, for breach of contract, fraud and more.

Absolute Poker has a reason to want to keep serving Americans. It might be their only chance at survival. All of the Black Poker-affected poker companies had a lot of business in the U.S., but Absolute had the highest percentage. Since Black Friday, Full Tilt Poker had a 24% drop in traffic and PokerStars had a 28% decline. Absolute Poker, on the other hand, lost 82% of their traffic. That’s not an easy thing to recover from. Absolute Poker’s days may be numbered for various reasons.

A recent poll conducted by the betting exchange found that there are two major factors weighing on the minds of internet gamblers, the US government’s freezing of assets back in May and the recession. The fact that the US government overstepped their authority, or what I like to call “doing what the government does best” by seizing funds to be paid out to winning players is a major concern among online players – at least those who know about it. The survey showed that 88% of the players were concerned about the security of their money and 76% moved to different sites as a result. However, only 42% of the players in the United States were aware of the freezing of assets from PokerStars, Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker.

 The poll also showed that 52% of the US players are spending less money in online casinos than the previous year due to the recession. So basically, online players are worried about the government stealing their money and about the government trashing our economy by spending too much of their money. Both problems seem to stem from the same principle: the government cannot be trusted with your money. The players’ worries about the government is the hurting online casino business, which should come as no surprise, because the current administration of bad for every other business as well, though it is good for the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and lawyers that love frivolous malpractice lawsuits. So if the online players want to make some real money they should probably join the UAW.