Home / Poker News December 2011 / A Closer Look at the Wire Act DoJ Memo
A Closer Look at the Wire Act DoJ Memo
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2011-12-26 13:16
While the significance of the DoJ announcement made public a couple of days ago regarding the 1961 Wire Act’s applicability to
online poker and gambling is far from clear, many news outlets hail the move as a major push to the legalization effort. Many of the experts chimed in with opinions ranging from the cautious to the downright enthusiast: According to I. Nelson Rose, a Whittier Law School gambling law expert, the move is giant gift to the online poker community.
While the said memo was a reply to an enquiry by New York and Illinois lottery officials who wanted to know whether using out of state payment processors and the internet to sell adults within the respective states lottery tickets was in contradiction with the provisions of the said Wire Act or not, according to Rose, it effectively eliminated every piece of federal anti-gambling law that would possibly affect gaming which is legal under state laws.
Because it comes on the heel of the legal moves made by the state of Nevada, the memo carries added significance. If a state like Nevada legalizes online poker on its own turf, there is no federal law to apply to operators who set up shop there.
According to the DoJ’s opinion, the Wire Act’s history shows that Congress had clearly intended it to be applied to sports betting and horse racing with the goal to prevent off-track wagering on horse races.
According to the memo, the ordinary definition of a sporting contest doesn’t encompass lottery in any shape or form, therefore the prohibitions instated by the Wire Act do not cover lottery (the same is obviously true for online poker as well).
The problem is that there is a provision in the Wire Act, which is meant to offer prosecutors the legal means to shut down lines through which foreign or inter-state gambling takes place. The DoJ memo didn’t touch that provision in any way.
