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U.S. Arrests Online Gambling Company Chairman

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pokemon-next-on-their-hit-list dept.

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?"

1 of 634 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I dont see the logic in this by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    WHEREAS ALL they NEED to do and HAD to do is to bar all access from u.s. to that u.k. site

    If the US government did that, then you'd be complaining about censorship.

    The problem is that this guy and his company accepted money from US citizens who were on US soil in exchange for providing a service that is illegal in the US. It would be trivial for him to refuse credit card transactions for cards where the address on record is in the US, and at least then he'd have plausible deniability. Of course, doing so destroys most of his market, so it's easy to see why he wouldn't do that.