Ringo
11-29-2011, 09:10 AM
There is no federal law against gambling online.
Some states might have laws against online gambling, but even there prosecution against players is rare. I know of only two cases a player ran afoul of state laws. The first was Jeffrey Trauman of North Dakota, who in 2003 paid a $500 fine on what was probably over $100,000 in sports bet winnings. The other was Roland Benavides, a police officer in Oklahoma who was charged in 2011. Oklahoma doesn't specifically outlaw online gambling, but their draconian statutes outlaw just about any kind of gambling whatsoever, so Benavides was charged under the general gambling statute. So far as I know, the states with specific anti-online-gamling laws are Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington.
It's against federal law for websites to take sports bets over the Internet. (It's against federal law for a site to take the bets, not for you to place them.) Federal law doesn't specifically allow or prohibit sites from taking casino or poker bets, and most legal observers feel that taking those bets isn't illegal.
It's against federal law for banks to handle online gambling transactions (e.g., players making deposits or withdrawals into or from an online casino). Again, it's against the law for the banks to handle the transactions, not for you to try the transactions.
Taking ads for online gambling isn't specifically illegal, and it would be quite a stretch to make a case under a different statute (like racketeering or conspiracy). Small publishers (like me) have never faced fed action taking ads for online gambling. The only publishers to face penalties were some huge publishers (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, in 2007), and a mid-size publisher in 2006 (The Sporting News). I wish they had contested the charges, since legal observers say they weren't breaking any law, but each simply paid a fine to end the matter quickly. None ever faced no criminal charges. The Sporting News' fine was equal to the money they'd collected from gambling ads. Google's penalty was only about a third of a single day's profit for them. Other publishers who took ads (like Esquire, who ran Bodog's poker ads) were warned by the DoJ not to take them any more, stopped doing so, and faced no penalties.
by Michael Bluejay, • Last Updated: October 2011
Some states might have laws against online gambling, but even there prosecution against players is rare. I know of only two cases a player ran afoul of state laws. The first was Jeffrey Trauman of North Dakota, who in 2003 paid a $500 fine on what was probably over $100,000 in sports bet winnings. The other was Roland Benavides, a police officer in Oklahoma who was charged in 2011. Oklahoma doesn't specifically outlaw online gambling, but their draconian statutes outlaw just about any kind of gambling whatsoever, so Benavides was charged under the general gambling statute. So far as I know, the states with specific anti-online-gamling laws are Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington.
It's against federal law for websites to take sports bets over the Internet. (It's against federal law for a site to take the bets, not for you to place them.) Federal law doesn't specifically allow or prohibit sites from taking casino or poker bets, and most legal observers feel that taking those bets isn't illegal.
It's against federal law for banks to handle online gambling transactions (e.g., players making deposits or withdrawals into or from an online casino). Again, it's against the law for the banks to handle the transactions, not for you to try the transactions.
Taking ads for online gambling isn't specifically illegal, and it would be quite a stretch to make a case under a different statute (like racketeering or conspiracy). Small publishers (like me) have never faced fed action taking ads for online gambling. The only publishers to face penalties were some huge publishers (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, in 2007), and a mid-size publisher in 2006 (The Sporting News). I wish they had contested the charges, since legal observers say they weren't breaking any law, but each simply paid a fine to end the matter quickly. None ever faced no criminal charges. The Sporting News' fine was equal to the money they'd collected from gambling ads. Google's penalty was only about a third of a single day's profit for them. Other publishers who took ads (like Esquire, who ran Bodog's poker ads) were warned by the DoJ not to take them any more, stopped doing so, and faced no penalties.
by Michael Bluejay, • Last Updated: October 2011