In breaking news, Absolute Poker has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to facilitate the return of player funds. A press release issued by Absolute Poker and UB owners Blanca Games on Tuesday afternoon proclaimed, “Absolute Poker has reached an agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Under the agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has agreed to provide all necessary assurances that third parties may work with Absolute Poker to facilitate the return of funds, currently held by third party processors, to players located in the U.S.”

How and when those funds will be returned remains to be seen.

As part of the agreement, Absolute Poker and UB, which together comprise the CEREUS Network, agreed to stop taking real money bets from members in the United States going forward. As such, the company did not ask for the return of its seized domain names AbsolutePoker.com and UB.com. UltimateBet.com, which was formerly an affiliate site, was also seized and not returned.

Absolute Poker and UB can now be found at AbsolutePoker.eu and UBPoker.eu, respectively.

Speaking to players who assume Tuesday’s news means that they’ll be able to cash out of Absolute Poker and UB immediately, the press release cautioned, “Absolute Poker’s top priority has always been, and remains, the refund of account balances to its U.S. players. Unfortunately, the Company still faces several legal issues which must be navigated before funds can be paid out to U.S. players.”

It bluntly added, “Player funds, therefore, will not become immediately available for withdrawal as a result of today’s agreement with the DOJ.”

Posters on PocketFives.com were quick to pick up on the news. One player wrote in a thread in the Poker Sites forum, “Seems pretty positive, and kind of ironic after reading these boards the last couple weeks, that UB/AP seem to be ahead of FTP in the payout process at this point.”

An online poker player from Ohio lauded, “May not be the final result that we want to see yet, but at least we are seeing steps in the right direction.”

PokerStarsand Full Tilt Poker reached agreements with the Department of Justice to facilitate player refunds in the week immediately following Black Friday on April 15th. As a result, both poker powerhouses regained control of their primary dot-com domain names, although PokerStars remains the only site to have cashed players out. Both rooms also agreed not to take real money action from U.S. players.

Tuesday’s Absolute Poker statement gave the next steps the company faces in order to secure ample funds to process payments: “Today’s signing of the agreement with the DOJ is an important step towards the safe and efficient return of funds to our U.S. players. We can now move as expeditiously as possible to collect player monies from third party processors as a prelude to establishing proper mechanisms for the return of funds to our U.S. players.”

Meanwhile, the future of U.S. funds on Full Tilt Poker remains up in the air. In a post on PocketFives.com from May 5th, Full Tilt representative ftpdoug told members of the community, “We are continuing to work on facilitating the withdrawal of U.S. player funds. It remains our top priority, and we do apologize for the delay.” He also claimed, “We expect to have a further update next week. Again, I apologize for the length of time this process is taking.”

Since then, Full Tilt Poker has not provided another update.

On Monday, Blanca Games, which owns the two CEREUS Network sites, disbanded its team of sponsored prosthat included PocketFives.com members Eric basebaldyBaldwin (pictured), Adam RoothlusLevy, Bryan badbeatninjaDevonshire, and Joe Sebok. A total of 11 pros were laid off.

In the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice indicting Absolute Poker’s Scott Tom and Brent Beckley, the CEREUS Network’s traffic has plummeted to a seven-day running average of 440 real money ring game players, according to PokerScout.com. Its 24-hour peak of 631 cash game players on Monday was well short of the 4,035 logged on April 12th, the high point for the site in the last two months.

Stay tuned to PocketFives.com for the latest fallout from online poker’s Black Friday.