The USA Clamps Down on Online Casinos – Will the World Follow Suit?

December 19, 2011

If you have been following some of our recent news articles, you will be aware of the fact we have recently reported on legislative and tax changes for online casinos in both the UK and Ireland. We have repeatedly asked the question, is this the writing on the wall for the online casino industry? Can we expect major reforms? Let us add a little more fuel to this fire by talking about the recent US Government action taken against Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker.

This news has been well document across hundreds of sources, so we will not take an in-depth look at it here; we are more interested in the ramifications. To summarize the situation briefly, at the prompting of the US Gaming Policy Committee (GPC), each of the three sites mentioned above were hit with legal proceedings for bank fraud, money laundering and a handful of other similar offences. This has resulted in each of these major online casinos withdrawing from the US marketplace.

Let us put aside whether these legal proceedings were right or wrong, and whether or not the sites in question were actually guilty of the offences they have been accused of. What we need to concentrate on is the fact that there can now be no doubt that Western Governments are beginning to look far more closely at the way in which online casinos operate.

More importantly, this deeper scrutiny is beginning to affect us, the online gamblers. Thousands of Full Tilt Poker members who are based in the USA are now extremely concerned that they will not be able to withdraw funds they have credit to the site. This is a direct result of the US Government taking this action. We have to wonder how the GPC thought that causing major problems for Full Tilt Poker, thus endangering the funds of thousands of consumers, is a viable move to protect online gamblers?

We are moving into grey times for online casino operators, and also us the online gamblers. 2012 could well see the start of the process for making online gambling entirely legal globally, yet the way in which this is implemented could cause us a whole bunch of short term problems.

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