Online Poker isn’t part of the Wire Act
So you think just because you play online poker and you’re a US
citizen, you’ll be excluded because of the Wire Act? Well sit
tight, because many have said that online poker doesn’t have
anything to do with this act and that US players are getting
banned for no reason whatsoever. Allyn Jaffray Shulman, who is a
respected American legal figure, analyzed the wire act as it
pertains to online poker and has come to the conclusion that it’s
outdated.
The statute, which was introduced to disrupt the
financing of organized crime only prohibits sports betting and NOT
online gambling, poker or anything else. She also says that
legislators themselves do not fully believe that the statute
prohibits online gambling activity. They are just viewing it as
criminal and going from there which in every essence is not the
legal way to go about this. The influence of the Wire Act, however
outdated, has seen the introduction of the UIGEA which
specifically targets the transfer of funds between citizens of the
US and online gambling companies overseas. In other words, online
poker was not within the reach of the Wire Act’s prohibition. The
District Court of Appeal agreed with Duvall’s ruling that the 1961
Wire Act does not apply to online poker.
The new bill attempts to make it more difficult to get money into
a gambling site by forbidding US financial Institutions from
funding the type of online gambling that the law has previously
made illegal. The new bill does not make online gaming illegal
where it was not illegal before. She says the new bill does not
make online gaming illegal. but merely speaks to the mechanism by
which an online account is funded. We’ll have to wait at least
another 180 days or so before the Secretary and the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System come up with enforcement
policies and procedures. Those procedures are directed to the
behavior of banks and credit card companies. Still, if this is
enforced, the gaming sites will find other ways for players to
fund them.
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"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how
close they were to success when they gave up"
