An advocacy group for online poker said Tuesday that the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players.

The Justice Department has long maintained that Internet gambling is illegal, a view that the poker group challenges.

The Poker Players Alliance told The Associated Press that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York instructed three banks to freeze the accounts.

Arlo Devlin-Brown, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York....asks that the bank treat the funds "as legally seized" by the FBI, saying that the government has probable cause that the gambling payments of U.S. residents had been directed to offshore illegal Internet gambling businesses.