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U.S. Arrests Online Gambling Company Chairman
imaginaryelf writes "Reuters reports that U.S. authorities have arrested Peter Dicks, the chairman of U.K. based online sports betting company Sportingbet Plc, while he was passing through Dallas. Just two months ago, the CEO of another U.K. based online sports betting company, BetOnSports, was arrested on U.S. soil as well. They are both charged with violating the 1961 Federal Wire Act, which can be broadly interpreted as declaring all forms of online gambling illegal in the U.S. Is online gambling the Alcohol Prohibition of the 21st century?"
according the article, he was arrested @ kennedy, not in dallas.
They applied it in the US - if he didn't want to be subject to US laws, all he had to do was not fly into the US. Problem solved.
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Well, go to betonsports.com
"To contact BetonSports Customer Service please call toll free 1-866-481-3057. You may also send email requests to:
customer_service@betonsports.com
Customer Service hours are Monday to Friday, 10am - 10pm EST. "
Hmm, looks like a US number and a US timezone there. May be UK based, but they are definitely targeting business to the US
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
He's being arrested for crimes having to do with wiring money to/from the US for gambling, not something he did in UK.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Could it have something to do with a vote dealing with a ban on Internet gambling coming up in the legislature in the next couple weeks? Could it have something to do with the fact Carruthers has been a vocal opponent of the upcoming bill. Strange that. The man is arrested based on his involvement in running an Internet gambling company. Yet referencing the vote on banning Internet gambling requires using the future tense.
Perhaps using a 1961 law that only questionably relates to the Internet and even more questionably relates to an individual operating out of a different country is not quite so sound...
http://www.reason.com/sullum/072606.shtml
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/sullum_ on_internet_gambling_ar.php
First off, the link says, "Dicks was arrested in New York late on Wednesday at JFK Airport on a warrant from Louisiana" nothing about Dallas. What's up with the warrant from Louisiana? Sounds like some small-timer that wants to stir things up. There's got to be more to the story.
I'm a big-time outspoken conservative and I love to play no-limit hold 'em (and hi/lo omaha). I'd like to state that I am very diappointed that republicans are backing this and I believe this really is just for votes this fall. There are democrat supporters on this as well, so it isn't completely one-sided. Everyone interested in keeping internet gambling alive needs to talk to their representative.
The good news is that this was tried in the late 90's and failed. It passed the house in 2003 but the senate didn't take up the issue. With the rate at which poker in particular is gaining popularity, this should be an issue that can be defeated. I see the senate again not taking up this issue in 2006. Post 2006 elections, it should disappear for a while again. Apparently big money doesn't buy all the votes as online gambling is worth bilions of dollars. AFIAK, as long as we have state lottos and Indian casinos, I don't want to hear anything from the state about why online gambling should be illegal.
Now as for the gentlemen who have been arested... the only good thing is that maybe they can sue and further clarify the law. The fifth circuit says the law only applies to sports. It would be great to see additional courts back this up as I believe they would.
your all missing the point
online gambling isnt illegal! (except in washington)
another interesting thing is american companies do illegal things in america EVERY DAY and their CEOs are almost NEVER arrested, instead the companies are fined/penalized or get away with it.. yet this guy is held personally responsible for something that MAY be illegal in the FUTURE... WTF??
whos racketeering here? the government is arresting these guys cause they dont pay protection (american taxes, cause they arent american companies!)
British people. British companies. Americans charging them with crimes as soon as they set foot on US soil.
What a load of bullshit.
So if cocaine was legal in the UK and they sold it to people in the US then the feds shouldn't go after them? (Replace cocaine with any product or service that fits) Just because something is legal in one country doesn't mean one can't face prosecution in another country where it's illegal if that product/service is offered in the other country.
I worked briefly for a company that ran a gambling website in the UK in conjunction with Harrahs casino. On-line gaming is apparently huge in the UK. In order to legally operate the site there were all sorts of checks to verify that a user was based in the UK. It included not only identifying the physical location of an IP address but validating the address of a credit card and other steps. Apparently all legitimite gambling sites in the UK are required to take these sort of steps if you don't want to run afoul of UK gaming laws. If this was a legit UK gaming website then they would have these same checks in place that would prevent people in the US from using it. It's his own fault for violating US laws (that happen to be well known in the gambling community) and thinking that he could travel here without getting arrested.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Good question.
The reasoning is that it's because there was no crime committed. It's legal to gamble in Vegas, just like it's legal to smoke pot in Amsterdam. Americans can't be arrested for smoking pot in Amsterdam any more than they can be arrested for gambling in Vegas. It all depends on where the action took place, and whether or not the action was a crime in the place it was committed.
The guy in the article was arrested because the gambling took place within an area where it's illegal -- namely, somewhere on US soil. He couldn't get arrested if the gambling only took place in Mexico or The Netherlands or Djibouti or wherever else gambling may be legal*.
*I have no idea if gambling is legal in Mexico, The Netherlands, or Djibouti. I was just pulling country names out of my ass to make a point.
Because the guy physically doing the gambling was in the US. The servers were only facilitating the gambling. Go back to my drugs and catapaults analogy from two posts ago. Just because you're the only one in Texas doesn't mean I'm not guilty of selling you drugs in the US. Just because the servers are in the UK doesn't mean the guy in his basement in Little Rock wasn't gambling using Peter Dicks' facilities.
Again, I'm not trying to defend the actions of the government here, I'm just trying to explain how our laws work in cases like this. So don't hate me, hate the system, man.
It's interesting to note that the purpose of the Wire Act was to target organized crime, and not gambling per se. Racketeering is generally associated with organized crime and/or public officials intimidating or coercing someone into providing payment under dubious pretenses. These offshore sportsbooks, however, are legitimate businesses where they are incorporated, and most people wager of their own free will. So, racketeering charges might not hold up.
Also, there is still a lot of ambiguity around what a "wire" transaction is. I think the way the law is worded it speficially targets telephone wires. Because of this ambiguity, I think there is a strong possibility of a defense based on both the intent of the law as well as technical aspects of the Wire Act.
IANAL
Not true. If you are not wearing a seatbelt, you are unrestrained, and you can turn into a projectile in the case of an accident. You can kill/maim other passengers in your vehicle, pedestrians, or people in another vehicle if you don't wear a seatbelt.
... and then they built the supercollider.
There seems to be a fair bit of confusion as to how the United States would have jurisdiction in this matter. Without getting too much into specifics, I'll quickly address this.
... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." International commerce with the US necessarily would involve some activities that occur outside of the US. But since the people engaging in those activities are engaged in commerce with us, they fall under the scope of what Congress can regulate. It's not necessary for them to physically be in the US at the time, for if it were, that wouldn't be international commerce; it would be wholly domestic.
The Constitution provides Congress with "Power
In this case, the person apparently set up a server in the UK and used it to conduct business with people in the US. Furthermore, in doing so, he apparently violated US laws which prohibit people from engaging in this form of commerce where it involves the US, regardless of where the person happens to be while doing it.
The same sort of thing occurs regularly within the US. For example, if a person in Maine has a website which is part of a business, buying or selling something (as opposed to being merely informational), then they are engaging in interstate commerce nationwide. An Alaskan user who buys something from their site has engaged in commerce with them, and now the person in Maine is subject to Alaskan law. This is the price of doing business with people across borders in our legal system: the differing laws on both sides of the border apply, because the transaction as a whole is occuring in both, not just in one or the other.
The actual situation is a bit more complex than this, but this is the gist of it.
If the person who was arrested doesn't wish to get in more trouble in the future, then he's going to either need to comply with US law, or stop doing business that crosses the US border. Or he can try to avoid going to the US or having assets in the US so that he simply stays outside of our reach, despite violating our laws. (N.b. that airspace counts: there are plenty of instances of people flying on planes, and getting served while crossing the airspace of a particular jurisdiction, by someone that followed them on the plane and waited for the right moment. Landing in that jurisdiction isn't required.)
In any case, this isn't much of an example of our stretching ourselves. If you want to see that, I'd suggest looking at the Alien Tort Claims Act. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, or with our general approach to this.
To those who would argue that repressive countries such as China or Saudi Arabia could try the same thing for basically innocuous things like pointing out how repressive they are (as opposed to something arguably more serious, such as illegally running gambling operations), let's remember that they are repressive countries and thus no one should ever want to go there until they clean up their act. As many idiotic and downright evil things as the US has been doing lately (or historically), we're not quite that bad, and I hope we're soon to get significantly better.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.