Baltimore Had to Cut its Investigation into Online Gambling Sites Short
Gambling911.com is slowly learning more about the actions taken yesterday (Monday May 24, 2011) against a handful of online gambling domains including Bookmaker.com, DoylesRoom.com and BetED.com. The US Attorney’s Office in Baltimore set up a phony payment processor in order to conduct a sting operation.
It now appears that the investigation was cut short following the indictments of Absolute Poker and UB.com on April 15.
Sources close to Gambling911.com suggested: “It appears as if they were going to continue running the ‘processing company’ and collect as much funds from Absolute Poker as possible, then seize all their money.”
That could no longer happen since Absolute Poker was essentially shut down in the US following the April 15 indictment.
The evidence of this theory is clear when one considers the sting operation only focused on Bookmaker.com and its related websites for less than three months, barely netting $100,00.
Both Bookmaker and Bodog (not named in any complaint) immediately began implementing new domain extensions, .ag and .eu, respectively, on Monday. The Bodog.com domain name now forwards to Bodog.eu.
The United States government can seize .com and .net domain names with just cause since they are part of the US network. The majority of online gambling companies operate outside the US.
- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
