Internet Gambling Illegal? In whose country?
This may be difficult for someone not from the US or from a federal system of government to understand, so let me give an example.If you are in Nevada, where gambling is legal, you can create a website and offer gambling legally. Of course you have to observe the Nevada laws on gambling, and probably have to pay the state or the city some portion of your cut. On the other hand, if you offer the gambling to someone in another state where, for the most part, gambling is illegal or tightly-controlled, you could be in trouble. You’re in trouble on two counts: let’s say that you knowingly allow someone from Kentucky to gamble on your site.
At that point, the State of Kentucky Attorney General has the right, nay the responsibility, to track you down and have you extradited to his or her state in order to stand trial for offering gambling to a Kentucky citizen. At the same time, because you offered and completed the gambling sale to a non-Nevada resident, you also may suffer from Federal laws against online gambling. So, after you are carted off to Kentucky and pay your fine and serve a jail sentence, you’re then off to Federal Court and the Federal Penitentiary for offering online gambling where it is illegal.
What if you have someone who wants to gamble who claims that he or she is offshore? There, the law gets a little bit cloudier. At that point, you are relying on the word of the person outside the US to represent that he or she is permitted to gamble under the laws of where they reside. If this is not true, then it is up to that country to push for your extradition to their land, and to prosecute your for breaking the law. If that country has an extradition treaty with the US, then boy, watch out! You could be in very deep trouble.
So internet gambling is illegal in a lot of places, but it has to be illegal in only one place in order to get you in hot water. So watch out where you erect gambling, and who your customers turn out to be!
