Is Non-Sportsbook Internet Gambling Illegal?

Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006 Online-Casinos.com

IS NON-SPORTSBOOK INTERNET GAMBLING ILLEGAL?

In any event, don't travel to the US to find out, recommends legal expert

The Carruthers arrest and detention without bail has again focused attention on the old legal question, "Are online casino and poker activities embraced by the 1961 Wire Act?" The act certainly covers the use of telephones to take US wagers, but does that extend to more recent technologies?

"The Justice Department has said [all] Internet gambling is prohibited, but most legal experts would say they are wrong, that this only applies to sports betting," opines Joseph Kelly, a legal scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who has consulted for the government of Antigua and others on US law.

Kelly said it was an unusual coincidence that the indictment - which was handed down in June but only unsealed this week - came in such close contiguity to the House of Representatives passing a new bill banning some, but not all forms of Web gambling in the USA.

"Why would Congress try to make something illegal if it is already illegal?" he asks.

Should gambling website operators be alarmed over the prospect of a general U.S. crackdown, potentially accompanied by extradition sorties abroad? Kelly and others say this is not happening yet.

"If they've got good legal counsel, they would be told there is a risk, but the risk is minimal," he said. "None of the other countries that license Internet gambling are going to allow the U.S. to extradite their licensees."

However, Kelly said that following the latest indictments and the arrest of a British national during a plane change in the United States, "My advice to anyone in the business is, 'Don't come into the United States, even to change planes.'"