My friend’s sister has a credit card that belongs to their mother. The mother gave it to the sister (let’s call her Jane). Jane gets the bills, but the mother is really liable for the charges.
So Jane is almost to the limit of $14,000 and she has been charging to “paysparks.” This is apparently online gambling. She charged $1400 in one month to paysparks.
My friend can go online to check out her mother’s bank account and was looking at the credit card and was shocked to find these charges.
Jane’s opinion is that, “oh well, mom’s going to die soon, these are her debts so I won’t be responsible for them.”
My friend and her one brother confronted Jane last night and Jane claims that she is just paying bills. She claims that you can not gamble online anymore.
I think they should tell the mother and cancel the credit card and put Jane on a payment schedule to pay off the credit card bill. She is really stealing from the mother and ultimately her sister and brothers because when the mother dies the estate will be less. In fact, it will be nothing because the mother’s assets will not pay off the credit card bill.
I would tell the mother, this is not acceptable behavor. I heard that a law was going to be passed making it illegal to electronicaly transfer funds from and to the U.S. that envolved gambling. That would make it a lot harder to gamble on the internet, but not impossible. Funds could still be sent and received by non-electronic means. I think it passed, but I don’t know for sure.
The Unlawful Internet Gaming Act, tacked onto an unrelated piece of legislation in the dead of night by evil men, was signed into law last year. It makes it illegal to transfer funds directly from a US financial institution or credit card to an online gambling site. Despite what some moderators here think, it does not make it illegal to transfer funds from a US bank to a third-party bank and then transfer the funds to a gambling site. I believe it also makes it illegal for credit card companies to pay online gambling sites but pretty much every credit card company had already blocked their cards from such use. I’m not familiar with “paysparks” but it sounds like an “electronic wallet” where one can place funds for later dispersal, which as I understand the law is not illegal, especially if thee-wallet is hosted outside the United States. And, it is not illegal under US law to gamble online. The highest court to rule on the subject, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the Wire Act (the law the DoJ hangs its “online gambling is illegal” hat on) does not apply to anything other that sports betting.
With all due respect, Otto, I think that’s an oversimplification. The law is murky, and despite what the Fifth Circuit says, the Department of Justice continues its aggressive pursuit of businesses engaged in online gambling. The Washington Post reported a surge of DoJ activity in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Whether their view ultimately is upheld or not, the DoJ considers transactions like you describe – using an intermediary to get money to a gambling website - a form of money laundering.
I have no problem with people like Otto playing online poker, and I don’t think most lawmakers do, either. What they’d like to stop is cases like the OP describes. People could place bets on football games or play poker before the internet existed, but it required some effort and the average Joe (or Jane) wasn’t going to take the risks. Now, there is no risk, and a person can lose their shirt from the privacy of their living room.
The problem is that the legislators are trying to find a way to make some forms of gambling illegal while preserving others, namely the ones that they profit from – lotteries, horse racing, licensed casinos. It’s impossible. There is no middle ground, and eventually they’ll realize that. The US stands virtually alone in the international community in it’s efforts to ban gambling. The pressure from the EU to open our markets to their gaming companies is growing, and that will eventually trump everything else.
I agree that the DoJ is continuing to act illegally in this matter, but the fact that they are continuing to act doesn’t make the actions legal.
And if they were targeting sports betting, they were acting within the provisions of the Wire Act.
They may think whatever they like, but the black letter of the law as I understand it and as has been explained by legal experts is that such transactions are not illegal.
I don’t mean for this to turn into a GD on the merits of the Nanny State.
It is precisely this selective protectionism which has made US gambling bans the target of WTO actions. About two weeks ago the WTO ruled that the US was still in violation of its treaty obligations. Unfortunately, the aggrieved party was Antigua and its only remedy is economic sanctions, which would hurt Antigua more than the US. I hope the EU does get involved and pressures the hell out of the US.
I wrote all of my federal elected officials and have received their strong assurances that should the subject of internet gambling again come before them they will take my views very seriously into account. I take such comfort from that.
I don’t either. I happen to agree with you on how things should be. I pointed that out only to show the genesis of the movement against online gambling, and how it’s lead us to the current situation where the answer to the OP’s question – “can you gamble online?” – is needlessly muddied.
The current administration has a view of how to interpret the law which is at odds with most legal scholars (not a situation unique to the issue of online gambling). While I’m not aware of any cases where they have pursued individual players, they have been very aggressive in dealing with businesses involved in online gambling. Whether the courts ultimately uphold the DoJ’s interpretation or not, the fact remains that they have made it very difficult for consumers by pursuing those business.
Back to the OP’s question… could the person have been using a credit card to put money in an online gambling account… I think Otto would agree that the answer is “absolutely yes.”
Technically she can still gamble online. Many of the most popular sites to gamble on are no longer available to those in the US, but people here are finding ways around it. And some gambling sites have not been affected at all by the new legislation, so those are still available.
It sounds as if it wasn’t gambling online, she would find other ways use the credit card and run up the bills since she thinks of it as free money for her use anyway. Since the mom is ultimately liable for the charges, she should probably be told that the card is practically maxed out.
Out of curiousity, I googled Payspark and found it is one of the few online accounts still being used by existing customers. So Jane could still have access to gambling through that company, as of last Friday anyway.
I don’t know specifically about Payspark, but many of these sites such as Click2Pay and ePassporte are often used for many things besides gamling. They sometimes issue disposable VISA card numbers, and allow one to pay on shadier sites without risking their primary bank account.
