Crackdown on Online Gambling Sites

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You can buy hard liquor at supermarkets? Here some supermarkets have liquor stores within them, but the liquor store is not owned by the supermarket, and it's not opened for the same hours as the supermarket. The supermarket is 24 hours a day, and you cannot, for example, show up at midnight and pick up a dozen eggs and a bottle of Jack Daniels (well, you can get the eggs). Anything you buy in the liquor store has to be paid for there - you cannot take it up to the cashier in the supermarket, and you cannot pay for any groceries within the liquor store either.

So they are completely separate businesses that just happen to operate within the same area. So you're saying that supermarkets in California have liquor stores that are self serve any time of day that the supermarket is open?

 

Beer and liquor laws vary from state to state. Illinois lets you buy beer and liquor in the supermarket. Coming from Pensy, it was an eye-opener. But there are still beer and liquor stores here, as the markets do not carry as large a selection as teh liquor stores do, they only sell the best-selling/advertised swill for the alcoholics. For example, it's hard to grab an Amstel Light or some Fat Tire at the market/gas station, they usuall yhave the normal Bud, Coors, Miller crapola. But the liquor stores will usally sell Amstel or Fat Tire by the case.

 

Overall, I'd agree with Snook here - the US ban on online gambling, imo, was more due to lobbying from land casinos who didn't want the competition. IIRC when the measure was taken, there was talk that the money earned could be funneled to terrorists or similar bull to give it a patriotic "dressing". At the end of the day, it was all about the money imo. As far as I know, online gambling has much lower expenses and among other things that can lead to somewhat higher percentage of payouts - which might not be lost on a lot of people that, apart from the fun, prefer a somewhat bigger chance to get something.

Yes, there are risks, and yes, gambling can lead to an addiction - not physical, unlike some drugs, but certainly psychological. I am all for some regulation and methods to limit unfair practices - actually many companies have those already as safeguards against litigation, but boy, do you have to badger your way to them. And of course there is the matter of how they, especially when the government is strapped for cash, can be taxed - which is only natural. Every dollar they pay is a dollar the rest of us don't have to . Generally, I'd much prefer to see gambling regulated rather than outlawed - if nothing else, it means the crooks who get the money from it are duly elected .

Now, that being said, the 2006 law has been in place for quite some time, and from what I see those companies tried to find a loophole in order to keep their US clients rather than adhere to it (other companies perhaps obeyed it, to their detriment). If Pokerstars and the like broke the law in trying to keep their profits high, let them face the consequences.

 

As I said, I'm a PA native as well, and so I was surprised that even beer was available for sale outside of beer stores in most states. I have never lived (or apparently ever gone to a supermarket) in a state that allows to open sale of hard liquor in supermarkets. I have visited many states for work though, and it seems to me that the most common arrangement is that you can buy beer in supermarkets. I rescind my previous comment about hard liquor not being available, as we already have proof from the residents of Illinois and California that such is not the case. If it's legal there, chances are other states are like that as well.

I think it's really two separate, although related issues. The first is did they break the law? If the information we have at this time is even close to accurate, they did, and there's really no getting around that. If you are a company and you claim to provide a service or item that you do not actually provide in order for a bank to do business with you, that's clear cut fraud. The second issue is the reason they committed fraud was that they couldn't do business with those banks otherwise due to laws in place. The issue of whether or not those laws should be in place, to me, is a separate issue.

Last I heard three of the 11 accused people were arrested, all of whom posted bail and have been released. I don't know if the other eight are currently living in the US or not. The base of operations is in Antigua, and since Antigua doesn't have laws prohibiting this activity, I seriously doubt the Antiguan government would agree to extridite them.

 

I've been drunk in Sweden enough times to know that this is not really enforced in practice. Just like Finland there's raids now and then to have the bars keep some sort of control over to whom they serve but most still won't care. There are very few bars around that have a strict policy in this matter. You'd have to be completely wasted in order for the bar tender to refuse to serve you drinks.

 

I realized after posting this, it wasn't specifically stated what these online casinos did in the article - only that they were accused of fraud. It basically breaks down like this:

After that law was passed in 2006, the casinos couldn't legally accept bets from people playing online in the US. So what they did was they set up these dummy companies, to accept the payments. This was all invisible to the player online, but when you purchased say, $100 worth of e-chips, what would actually happen is the casino would front you that money.

Meanwhile the dummy company would process a transaction for $100 of a service you were supposedly buying. The bank that was linked to the player's credit or debit card would process the transaction and transfer the money from your account to the dummy company, which would then transfer the money to the casino.

In other cases, there were direct bribes by the companies, usually to small, privately owned banks in the US - to process their transactions. So under US law as currently written, it's clearly illegal. Supposedly the banks that accepted these bribes are in a lot of trouble as well.

 

That is correct. Technically, it wasn't illegal to take the bet, it was illegal for a bank to process the transaction. The end result was the same though - without a middle man in the form of a dummy company, the bets couldn't go through.

 

I believe the law also specifically criminalizes the online casinos or poker sites from accepting the funds (or, rather, the transfers). I'm not sure just how applicable that is for companies that are outside of US jurisdiction, though. I think it would make sense to make the ban on US customers or US-based companies that facilitate such exchanges.

 

And if the site and bank were say located in... say, Bermuda???

 

A close relative of mine tried online gambling as the last resort to salvage an out of control spiral of debts, and needless to say, only ended up deeper in the mud. So my take on the issue might be somewhat tainted.

I don't see gambling as inherently evil or anything like that, but I can't fathom why there isn't rather strict safeguards in place. Like for example, you'd need to fill in some sort of a declaration of income as you register yourself as a user on an online casino and you get a strict monthly allowance based on that. The true diehard fanatics wouldn't blink an eye while lying their eyesockets off in that declaration, while the salvageable poor souls would at least need to make a conscious decision between committing a fraud or having at least rudimentary safeguards in place.

 

It wouldn't be an issue at all, but if you're an American, and you own a credit card (which is the way pretty much everyone buys their chips), chances are that credit card is tied to a US bank. At the very least, even if the parent bank isn't a US company, the bank that processes the transaction is.

And in fact, the base of operations of these online casinos are not on US soil. They are located in Antigua.