This time it’s Peter Dicks, chairman of Sportingbet Plc, the online bookmaker that owns Paradise Poker. Company statement here. The company said he was in the U.S. on non-related business - I hope it was important, as I can’t understand why he’d set foot there after David Carruthers, then the chief executive officer of Betonsports Plc, was arrested and charged with crimes including racketeering in July.
Nothing online that I can find that isn’t based on the company’s press release so I’m hoping (probably in vain) that this is some sort of misunderstanding. Good to know that all the other problems the nation is facing have been solved so that the Justice Department has all these man-hours to devote to cracking down on harmless internet gaming that’s based in countries in which it’s 100% legal and regulated.
Also nice to see that the US is respecting its treaty obligations to the World Trade Organization. The WTO has ruled that the US anti-gaming laws are in violation. Of course the complaining nation is Antigua and their remedy is economic sanctions against the US which would hurt Antigua more than it would hurt the US, so the government continues to give a big “fuck you” to the rest of the world on yet one more circumstance.
I urged everyone who has any interest in legal, regulated online gaming a couple of months ago to contact your members of Congress and tell them to vote for regulation of online gaming rather than a ban, and I’m renewign that call today. There’s a bill under consideration right now which purports to ban internet gaming from the US which needs to be defeated.
While Web gaming may be legal and regulated in the places where the companies are based, the U.S. government has consistently taken the position that Internet gambling is illegal under the 1961 Wire Act. IANAL, but whether one agrees with that view or not, it seems to me the Feds have every justification for arresting managers of foreign companies that do business considered illegal under U.S. law if said managers obligingly present themselves in the country.
Yes, and that’s despite a 2002 Fifth Circuit ruling (PDF) that affirmed a lower court ruling that the plain language of the Wire Act does not prohibit non-sports internet gambling.