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In a shocking new development, the website CalvinAyre.com is reporting that the US Department of Justice will begin to take on a new approach in dealing with those online gambling operators who once took bets from US citizens. The feds are reportedly now accepting corporate pleas and fines to resolve all outstanding charges.
The CalvinAyre.com website focuses on the world’s largest online poker room, PokerStars, upon breaking this news, however, the new policy could ultimately apply to Bodog. That company’s founder, Calvin Ayre, runs the eponymous news site reporting on this matter.
From CalvinAyre.com:
Sources have told CalvinAyre.com that the US Department of Justice has adopted a new approach toward pending prosecutions of individuals in connection with online gambling. In essence, provided those being prosecuted aren’t US citizens and the companies with which they are associated maintained no physical infrastructure within US borders, the DOJ will accept corporate pleas and fines to resolve all outstanding charges.
Ayre, who is not a US citizen, was named in an indictment filed by the US Attorney out of Maryland nearly two years ago. The Bodog brand continues to thrive across the globe with a special emphasis on the Asian market.
Likewise, PokerStars founder, Isai Scheinberg, was also indicted as part of the infamous "Black Friday" investigation that brought down both Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker in April of 2011. PokerStars was forced to stop accepting customers from the US as a result.
Stars, like Bodog, remains a juggernaut in the online poker sector. PokerStars, in particular, is working hard to re-enter the US market.
Neither PokerStars nor Bodog ever maintained infrastructure on US soil.
For its part, the CalvinAyre.com website stays clear of mentioning Bodog’s potential for re-entering the US market with the blessing of the Feds, but certainly one can make a case they fit the new criteria.
Our sources indicate Scheinberg’s DOJ difficulties will be resolved in 2014, ridding Stars of the legal hangover that has so far delayed the company from launching its own operations in New Jersey.
The DOJ's reported new stance is certainly a sharp contrast from what new American Gaming Association Chief Geoff Freeman vowed recently, suggesting his organization would push hard to keep offshore unlicensed gambling sites from entering the US marketplace regardless of the company’s founders or executives citizenship status. The AGA fought hard to keep PokerStars out of New Jersey, a state which recently legalized real money online gambling.
Conspiracy theorists might argue that the President Barack Obama Administration DOJ's new stance was brought on by GOP mega donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson's recent rants against online gambling.
Ayre and Scheinberg have long argued that they were not breaking any gambling laws as non-US citizens.
The CalvinAyre.com site draws an interesting parallel between PokerStars and that girl next store; she being a virgin of course.
For US players who could no longer play on the site after Black Friday, Stars was that perfect girl you dated in high school but whose family moved to another town before senior year and you never saw her again. Stars’ absence only enhanced its positive qualities in players’ minds and prompted wistful thoughts of what might have been had fate not so cruelly separated you.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
