Online Gambling Firm Settles Charges, Forced To Apologize And Never Do It Again

from the bad-company dept

Fri, Nov 10th 2006 12:05pm — Joseph Weisenthal

In addition to having its CEO held in the US on racketeering charges, online gambling firm BETonSPORTS has been dealing with a civil case brought against the company seeking to permanently ban it from accepting bets from Americans. Today a settlement has been reached that achieves that government's goal; the company will stop doing business in the US, and it will take out an ad in a major US newspaper informing people that online gambling is illegal. This is a strange requirement. For one thing, the case was brought before the current ~~port security~~ anti-gambling bill went into effect, and furthermore, it's not clear that the latest bill actually bans online gambling. It simply bans banks from allowing transactions with online casinos, but there's nothing in there about banks doing transactions with a payment processing firm like Neteller (the European PayPal), which can then do a transaction with a casino. If anything, it sort of looks like the government is trying to bully casinos and online gamblers without a full legal justification, though there's no reason that should be seen as much of a surprise.

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6 Comments

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Michael, 10 Nov 2006 @ 1:00pm

The recent bill did only deal with the credit card companies, and made no changes to the laws that applied to the casinoes themselves. The new law is a choke-point theory -- Whether or not the underlying gambling is illegal, make it impossible for them to get their money, which makes the legality of gambling essentially a moot point.

The laws about gambling regulation are old, and continue to apply before and after the new law's effect. The laws that are at stake under the discussion above are those old laws, not the new one.

One might argue if the anti-gambling laws can be applied to the offshore purveyor, and certainly the guy who is defending the fellow stuck in St Louis now awaiting criminal trial, will be making all of those arguments. We shall see what happens there...
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Dosquatch, 10 Nov 2006 @ 1:06pm

As best I can tell...
As best I can tell, the law only adds a hurdle or two, which quite frankly already existed seeing as the major credit cards had already taken it upon themselves to deny transactions with online casino-type companies.

I play poker. I fed my account with Neteller. I use Neteller to send winnings back my way. What other form of entertainment pays me to play?
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B_Billy, 10 Nov 2006 @ 4:55pm

I still don't understand why online gambling, or any gambling (unless you're betting on your own sports league) is illegal in the US. Who is it harming? Besides, wouldn't taxes collected on winnings be a good thing? This makes absolutely no sense.
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Solo, 10 Nov 2006 @ 8:49pm

Banning gambling is probably just as effective as banning alcohol (they never tried that, did they? That certainly would not work!

So banning online gambling is just about as effective as banning underage drinking...

In the privacy of my home, using the internet through a private ISP, connecting to a service provider (gambling web site, privately owned) my government is telling me I can't play. Even though every simgle bar is stuffed with (state provided) lottery machine, video pokers and other crap rooms. Wow.

I'm not a gambler, but it looks like the government wants to keep all the pimping for themselves.
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|333173|3|_||3, 12 Nov 2006 @ 4:33pm

Stuff them
They will not manage to ban gambling, so in my opinion, tyhey can waste time making such stupid laws and save you americans from the damage which they might cause if they used thier admitedly limited brains to try to find a sucessfull way of banning gambling/porn/etc.
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Amarillo Fatty, 13 Nov 2006 @ 9:20am

The legislation was lobbied for by the brick and mortar casinos who see the American gambler as their private property. They were tired of losing business to online casinos that don't have their bloated cost structure.
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