What a style . of U.S.A..............Or Chicago-style strong arming by the Federal Government? Or both?ONLY ONE DAYS LATER........ Washington D.C. approves online poker gambling, the Justice Department, FBI hands out indictments to three major online poker sites charging them with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses.
“Executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker have been PAYED with bank fraud and money laundering. The FBI CLOSES three of the largest poker websites Friday in what appears to be the largest crackdown on illegal online gambling to date. Eleven executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker have been charged with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses. Prosecutors are seeking to immediately shut down the sites and recover $3 billion from the Companies.”
A related L.A. news paper explains how “the bust” going on , the effects among online gamblers, and the ramifications of the Federal law passed in 2006 under the direction of then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist when he added the measure to a port security bill.
“The FBI had shut down two of the sites, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, by Friday evening and were working to do the same with the third, Absolute Poker. Online visitors were greeted with a message saying, “This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant,” and an enumeration of federal anti-gambling statutes and penalties.
An approax 8 million to 10 million Americans play poker online for money; thousands of them earn their living on the sites, according to a players advocacy group.
Congress tried to shut down the industry by enacting an anti-gambling law in 2006, but most sites found ways to work around the vaguely worded measure. Since then other members of Congress have proposed bills to legalize Internet gambling, but they have failed to reach a floor of either chamber.
“These defendants concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits,” Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement.
The 2006 law did not directly outlaw online poker sites, but instead barred businesses from taking payments for “unlawful” online gambling, leaving the definition of what is unlawful to others.”
And Bill Frist motives were certainly questionable at the time, still leaving online gambling sites wondering how the law was to be interpreted:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in pushing the measure through Congress as part of a port security bill just prior to adjournment last weekend, seemed more intent on pleasing social conservatives than truly gutting online gambling.
Joseph Kelly, a law professor at Buffalo (NY) State College and an attorney for online gaming concerns, calls the law “highly unenforceable.” The act makes it illegal for banks to transfer money from customer accounts to online gambling firms. But for the most part, bettors don’t pay their online bookies directly. Payments usually are routed to offshore firms through an online intermediary such as Canadian-based Neteller, the biggest money-transfer firm in this sphere. In addition, American banking lobbyists insisted that the most basic form of payment be exempted if the industry was to support the law. That’s the good old-fashioned check — both paper and electronic versions — whose volume made them impossible to monitor. So checks are exempted.
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