On April 15, 2011, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York seized and shut down Pokerstars and several of its competitors' sites, alleging that the sites were violating federal bank fraud and money laundering laws.

PokerStars, like other online poker platforms, uses a random number generator (RNG) to ensure fair play for both real money and play money games. The play money algorithm is not designed to be rigged to make players buy more play money.