US Gamblers To Get Frozen Assets Back, Feds Still Looking For A Crime
from the there-must-be-a-crime-somewhere dept
Are the Feds going soft in the war on online gambling? For the last couple of months, gamblers in the US have been stuck in limbo as popular money transfer firm NETeller was unable to return to them funds that were being held by the company. While the government has gone after online gambling firms and the financial institutions that abet the business, it's not clear that the actual act of placing a bet online is illegal, so it didn't make sense to victimize gamblers themselves. It now appears that NETeller has reached a deal with the Department of Justice to return $55 million in frozen assets at some point in the next 75 days, although the details of this transfer have yet to spelled out. It's great that the DOJ is concerned about getting people their money back, but it appears it might have an ulterior motive here. As part of the agreement, NETeller will undergo a complete forensic audit that will allow the Feds a detailed look into how the whole business works. It bears repeating that NETeller isn't itself an online gambling firm. It's basically the European version of PayPal, and, as PayPal used to do, it helps people transfer money to online casinos. The company's founders were arrested back in January, but so far haven't been formally charged with anything, so it seems as if this forensic audit is basically a way for the Feds to figure out what, if anything, the NETeller founders can be charged with. Meanwhile, the cost and effort associated with this whole anti-gambling push continues to escalate, and it's still not clear who the victims are or why this is a government priority at all.
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So...
That's a fishing expedition if I ever heard one.
I'm willing to bet that somehow the Feds will end up with a list of all the customers that do business iwth NETeller.
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mony lounder
if they can't control-it proper, like any other financial enterprise, they don't want-it, period.
if they would had wilder activity, no suspicion. casinos ... fast money moving under real cover operations, easy to infiltrate and outcast lots of money, no questions asked... well, catches eyes pretty fast...
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Re: mony lounder
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Re: Re: mony lounder
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Re: Re: mony lounder
on topic.. this is just another example of the Feds using their limitless power to stick their noses into everything we do...
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What they want is a market that is free for them to plunder.
Period.
Forget evangelical christianity, the real religion of the conservatives is rapacious greed.
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Idiocracy
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The Commission for the European Union has demanded that countries that promote domestic gambling but do not allow out of country sports betting or Internet gambling must open up their borders or risk being taken to court.
So far, it's Denmark, Finland, and Hungary that face prosecution if they continue to promote internal gambling without allowing free trade for online gaming compaies, but the same legislation could be used to go after the United States, which is in contravention of both EU and WTO rules since it banned Internet wagering last year
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EU
> to go after the United States, which is
> in contravention of both EU and WTO
> rules
The WTO is one thing since the US voluntarily signed on to that organization, but since when is the US required to follow EU rules?
We're not a member of the EU and the EU has no legal authority to bind the US to anything, certainly not in the sense of proseucting us in court.
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Just say NO to no limit!
"Just say NO to no limit! (Unless it is in a state and federally sanctioned (ie: taxed) casino)."
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Illegal under Right to Financial Privacy Act 1978
There is a US law, "Right to Financial Privacy Act" and that law protects peoples financial transactions from WARRANTLESS searches. They can only get it through a proper subpoena, or by making a request to the customer concerned and then only for targetted searches not fishing expeditions like this one.
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Juristiction
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Online Gambling US
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