Online Gambling Sites For US Players

Legal Issues Associated With Online Gambling In The United States

The most important thing a players needs to know is whether or not they are breaking the law when gambling online in the U.S. The good news is that it is legal for almost all players to gamle online. In fact, there is only a 4 states that have any direct laws related to online gambling in the U.S. Without getting into the particular nuances within those states, we're going talk about the two primary federal laws that affect online gambling in the United States, the UIGEA and Wire Act.

UIGEA of 2006 - The "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act" of 2006 has really made life difficult for Americans who want to gamble online but not in the way that you would think... ie Blocking a user from a site. Rather, the UIGEA works by making it illegal for U.S. banks to process transactions with known offshore gambling entities. In reality, this was supposed to keep Americans from using credit cards and bank transfers to fund gambling accounts. But, in actuality, all this did was create new methods and intermediaries (like PayPal, but not PayPal specifically) with which Americans could use to funnel funds into their gambling accounts. And, even then, Americans can still use their credit cards because offshore gambling sites have gotten wise and switch their payment processors frequently. If a new payment processor does not throw a red flag for being related to gambling, the money goes right through every time. Of course, banks will eventually catch on, credit card transactions will work with less frequency and that is when the site switches to a new payment processor. To learn more about how to circumvent the UIGEA, visit our casino deposit methods section.

Wire Act of 1961 - As you can see from the date, this law goes way back in the books and it essentially says that wire communication can not be used to facilitate sports betting. Back in 1961, this meant using a telephone but as technology grew and with the advent of the Internet, this grew to encompass computers as well. And, as the interpretation of what "wire communication" is, so did the areas of online gambling it enforced. Clearly the purpose of the law was to prohibit sports betting but authorities began taking it a step further to apply it to online casinos and online poker which had recently become very popular in the U.S. But, that is no longer the case as in December of 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice clearly stated it's new interpretation of the law to only include sports betting, whether it be by phone, Internet, etc... This was great news for casino gamblers and poker players but sports bettors were still left hanging in the wind. But, recent debate suggests that this law doesn't even apply to individual citizens but rather the businesses that accept these wagers. You can check the books and you're not going to find any individual consumer that been prosecuted for just betting on sports. People who have run into legal trouble in the past with the Wire Act either owned or operated a bookmaking operation, were being investigated by the IRS on tax charges, or had their financial records exposed in messy divorces. Bottom line, don't own or operate a bookmaking operation and keep your business discreet.