Legal Concerns Growing Among Industry
April 26, 2010
By Andrew Feldman
It hasn’t been the best week so far if you’re an online poker player in the United States and looking toward legalization and regulation. Despite numerous bills being discussed in Congress regarding making the online industry regulated and licensed, news has broken at a rapid rate this week regarding potential troubles ahead.
Early Monday morning the Financial Times posted an article titled, “Court probe into internet poker site.” It states that a federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating Full Tilt Poker and could bring indictments against some of the most well-known poker players in the world. Author Joseph Menn specifically noted Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson as two potential targets in the investigation, but a source has told me that at this point nothing concrete has been presented.
Among the major concerns from the article is the specific investigation of money laundering violations. Menn writes, “Money-laundering charges might be attractive to the government as they would compel co-operation from authorities even in countries where gambling is legal.”
After poker forums everywhere quieted down just a little bit Monday night, fans woke up on Tuesday to see another troublesome headline. Tuesday morning marked the passage of the “Speaker’s Gaming Proposal” in the Massachusetts State House Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies, a proposal that has an aim of expanding gambling in the state. Despite the intentions of providing more opportunities to gamble, it also makes online poker illegal and punishable by up to two years in jail and a $25,000 fine. The bill now goes to the House Ways and Means Committee for further discussion and action. The Poker Players Alliance has responded by asking for the support of all players from Massachusetts, who the PPA is asking to contact their local representative and express their concern.
Oh, that’s not all. Enter Kentucky, which just announced that it will provide a home for the Derby Poker Championship two days before the Kentucky Derby. While they may be OK with live poker, they’ve decided to sue Full Tilt (which is having a really, really bad week) and other online poker sites to recover the losses of all players who played online poker from Kentucky since 2005.
Really? What if some of the estimated 13,000 online poker players in Kentucky have won big? Are they going to seize that money too if this activity is as illegal as they’ve preached?
According to PokerNewsDaily, Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet Secretary J. Michael Brown, filed a suit on March 25 looking for the recovery of these funds. At the same time the Commonwealth is trying to seize the rights of 141 Internet gambling domain names, which had been the focal point of the online poker battle in the state until the most recent developments.
Article source www.espn.go.com
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