Many of you who are trying your luck in internet gambling are ignorant about applicability of Wire act to internet gambling. Here I am sharing some crucial information about this topic.
The applicability of the Wire Act to Internet gambling is the subject of great confusion and debate. Even before gambling made its way to the Internet, it was unclear whether the Wire Act applies only to sports betting or to all gambling. Another issue is that the Wire Act covers "transmission of a wire communication." The law has not answered whether that applies to the Internet, and especially does not answer whether it covers a wireless connection to the Internet. Nevertheless, the federal government has rarely had trouble extending its jurisdiction, and even if the bettor maintains a wireless connection, almost all Internet communications are dependent on some form of wired communication for routing or other purposes.
The Wire Act has been used to obtain a federal conviction in the case of Jay Cohen. Cohen was one of the operators of an offshore betting service, which was being charged with federal crimes for illegal gambling. Perhaps he thought that the law would vindicate him, but in any event, Cohen made the mistake of returning to the United States from the Caribbean. It was only when he arrived here that he could be arrested and prosecuted. He was convicted in 2000, and that conviction has been upheld.
I have not been able to find any prosecution of bettors for Internet gambling. Many lawyers fed that the Wire Act does not cover individual bettors. I wouldn't go that far, because an individual bettor could theoretically be charged for aiding and abetting, or for conspiracy to engage in Internet betting. In fact, I know that some prosecutors in the U.S. Justice Department take that very position.
Since the advent of Internet gambling, there has always been legislation pending in Congress to prohibit Internet casinos, or make them impossible to operate. I think I’ve at least a hundred articles in different publications about the possible passage of bills that would ban Internet casinos or discourage them into oblivion. The Kyle, Good latté, and Leach bills have not yet been passed because of competing legislative interests. I would predict that eventually a watered-down compromise version of one of these bills will pass, with enough loopholes and exemptions that will make enforcement, already a difficult undertaking, impossible.
These bills get caught up in politics, with various competing special interests, including the gaming industry, banks, Native Americans, antigambling organizations, Internet corporations, and legislators who' don't understand the issues but are sensitive to the direction of political winds. It may well be that any legislation that gets passed is irrelevant.
The biggest obstacle to the effectiveness of any legislation is enforcement. In the legal field, the key word is jurisdiction. First, the government needs physical jurisdiction over the person or company it seeks to regulate in any way.
Obviously, it is difficult to arrest, or serve a summons on, a person or an entity that is not located in a given state, and is not even physically in this country. It's just as difficult to fine or jail a person or entity that has never physically been in this country. And even if the federal government, or a state government, won a case against such an entity, how could you get at their assets, which are similarly not even in this country? In addition, the government needs what lawyers call subject matter jurisdiction over a dispute. Basically, this means that there has to be a clear’ law in place to govern Internet gambling, and there has to be sufficient activity within the United States to govern a particular transaction.
Obviously, the government cannot force people from other countries to submit to the law of the United States, to come to the United States to face trial, and so on.
However, the regulatory power of the U.S. government is so great that it is the major force behind the decisions of MasterCard and Visa to restrict the use of their cards and accounts for Internet gambling. Similarly, domestic companies that finance Internet Gambling, develop software, and advertise Internet gambling, as well as, Internet service providers and land-based gambling corporations that might diversify onto the Internet, are all vulnerable to governmental regulation and "persuasion", to keep them from becoming involved with Internet casinos.