Online Poker isn't part of the Wire Act

An article on cardplayer.com recently had Ms. Allyn Jaffray Shulman quoted as saying;

After researching the 1961 Federal Interstate Wire Act, I conclude that online poker playing is EXCLUDED from its reach for the following reasons:

1) The WORDS of the statute specifically prohibit SPORTS BETTING and nothing more.

2) The LEGISLATIVE HISTORY indicates the statute was aimed at organized crime, specifically in the area of sports betting.

3) CASE LAW construes the statute as applying to sports betting.

4) The only CASE ON POINT to address the issue specifically found that the Wire Act does not apply to online gambling; and

5) Recent PROPOSED AMENDMENTS to the Wire Act demonstrate that legislators do not believe that the statute prohibits online gambling.

In concluding, Ms Shulman stated “As we analyze the statute, the first important point is that the WORDS clearly state that SPORTS BETTING is at issue. 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”.

 

About Allyn Jaffray Shulman
A respected American legal figure,who received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Irvine in 1977, where she graduated cum laude and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa . She is a practicing criminal defense attorney, having received a Juris Doctorate with scholastic merit from Western State University, where she served as
Research Editor and Executive Editor of Law Review in 1982-1983. She has lectured all over California , teaching other attorneys the fine points of criminal defense.

She specialises in legal research and her areas of expertise include the filing of
extraordinary writs, appeals and motions where a lower court judge commits legal error or where the police or prosecutors engage in misconduct. She has been closely following the development of gaming law and the Internet ever since Jay Cohen, who was onvicted in New York of operating a sports betting business from Antigua in violation of the Wire Act.