Online Casino News and Information

The Association of Players, Casinos and Webmasters (APCW) has been seeking viable ways to bring online gaming back to America in a legal and regulated format for the past several months. It is with great pride and enthusiasm that the APCW can now officially announces our working partnership with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Webcom Network to identify and explore how the charitable online gaming model can accomplish this, while simultaneously creating a dedicated revenue stream for the Veterans Administration.

This cooperation places the APCW in a leadership role to help construct the business and legislative strategies which could bring legal and regulated online gaming to the United States. The Veterans Service Organizations would greatly benefit from the charitable gaming model, much like state lotteries have helped to fund education, especially in light of proposed budget cuts to their benefits and with a growing veteran population which already numbers several million.

The logistics and details are currently still in the discussion phase on Veterans blogs and forums, and at the APCW blog and message board. We encourage all who have an interest in online gaming to participate in the discussion process. Details can be found at www.APCW.org.

February 17, 2007

FirePay announced to it’s members it plans to do away with Canadian payments to online gambling merchants beginning February 21, 2007.

“Important policy change for Canadian FirePay account holders

Effective February 21, 2007, FirePay (www.firepay.com) will no longer allow Canadian consumer payments to online gambling merchants.

Effective February 28, 2007, FirePay (www.firepay.com) will no longer allow Canadian consumers to receive payments from online gambling merchants.

All Canadian FirePay account holders will continue to be able to make purchases and receive payments from non-gambling online merchants, as well as to “Deposit From” and “Withdraw To” their Canadian bank account.”

Winnipeg Free Press
Thu Feb 15, 2007

TORONTO (CP) - Gaming software producer CryptoLogic Inc. (TSX:CRY) said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit dropped 70.6 per cent to US$1.7 million in its first report reflecting financial performance since the U.S. government declared a ban on online gambling.
For the ended Dec. 31, the company’s earnings were equivalent to 12 cents per diluted share, down from $5.8 million or 43 cents per share, in the same period last year.

The quarter was impacted by $1 million in reorganization costs for the shift of its headquarters to Ireland.

Revenue was $19 million, down from $25.1 million in the comparable period.

However, CryptoLogic posted a record annual profit of $24.8 million and revenues of $104 million.

The results come after the U.S. government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act into law on Oct.-, effectively banning online gambling in the U.S.
CryptoLogic said the short-term impact on revenue and earnings was “heightened” by the new law, adding that the fourth quarter is consider its strongest of the year.

MORE - READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE AT Winnipeg Free Press

Neteller reported today that it plans to cut 220 jobs in Canada and 30 in the UK; a direct result of their exit from the US market which was escalated by the arrest of its founders in the US last month. The arrests were the latest in a long list of actions taken by the US against the online gambling industry in an intense effort to cease all online gaming within its borders.

G&C Editors Note: It’s unclear whether Neteller founders, Lefebvre and Lawrence, were in court for the preliminary hearing or whether the hearing even took place. Very little information is available at this time. This will be updated as information comes in.

USA TODAY
2/14/2007 10:55 PM ET
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — The waiting game for thousands of U.S. patrons with money tied up in an online payment service under federal investigation just got longer.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York late Wednesday said it extended the deadline until March 16 to decide whether to indict the co-founders of Neteller, an Internet money-transfer service popular among gamblers. Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre were arrested in January on a charge of conspiracy to transfer funds with the intent to promote illegal gambling

For U.S. customers of the site, it was another delay in their efforts to recoup their money, which remains in Neteller accounts until the legal matter is resolved.

Neteller says U.S. authorities have frozen access to about $55 million in U.S.-based accounts.

“As a result of the restrictions placed by third parties, court-ordered seizures and related legal concerns, (Neteller) is unable to make payments to U.S. customers,” says a posting on the company’s website.

FBI agent Neil Donovan has said funds are being held in court as potential evidence. He did not provide a timetable on when customers may get their money back.

Though money-transfer companies such as Neteller do business with financial institutions and merchants, many also allow gambling companies to transfer money collected from U.S. gamblers to bank accounts outside the USA. Neteller last month closed its U.S. Internet gambling services, erasing about two-thirds of its business.

A law signed by President Bush in October bans the use of credit cards, checks and electronic fund transfers for Internet gaming. U.S. residents place more than half of all bets to major offshore casinos in an estimated $10.6 billion industry. However, most online gaming sites are based offshore, outside the reach of American law enforcement.

With Neteller’s financial future teetering in the balance, consumers might choose less reliable money-transfer services instead, says Ken Dreifach, an Internet attorney.

LAS VEGAS SUN
Jeff Simpson on why it’s unlikely the online gambling ban will be reversed
February 11, 2007 at 7:18:8 PST

American Gaming Association President Frank Fahrenkopf told me last week that if online poker players are confident they can persuade Congress to pass a law that would define poker as a game of skill, they’re sadly mistaken.

The poker players, online poker rooms and poker publishers hope that the recent changes in congressional leadership will prompt legislators to reverse the impact of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which caused the leading online poker room to stop taking action from Americans and made funding and withdrawing money from online poker accounts more cumbersome.

A law that defined poker as a game of skill would exempt online poker from the UIGEA.

The climate on Capitol Hill is not favorable for any pro-Internet gambling legislation, he said.

“They don’t have a chance in hell,” Fahrenkopf said.

The AGA supports a congressionally mandated study of online gambling to see whether technology exists to make sure customers are playing from jurisdictions that allow betting, keep underage bettors from wagering and limit problem gambling. If the study determines that the technology exists to provide those safeguards, then a law could be passed allowing individual states to decide whether to offer online gambling.

Fahrenkopf acknowledged that even if those two hurdles are cleared, it is unlikely that states would set tax rates low enough to compete with the barely regulated and taxed casino and poker sites that now proliferate.

EDMONTON JOURNAL
Jason Markusoff; with files from the Canadian Press
Published: Saturday, February 10, 2007

EDMONTON - There is a glimmer of hope the Alexander First Nation can successfully fend off a showdown the government has threatened over the band’s attempts to create a haven for online casinos, legal experts say.

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission is investigating the Edmonton-area band, which is offering licences for online poker, casino or sports-betting houses, but has apparently not started operations. The provincial body deems that any gaming schemes taking place outside its regulations is against the Criminal Code.

“Being illegal — we will take every action to ensure that it doesn’t happen in Alberta,” said Solicitor General Fred Lindsay, minister responsible for the AGLC.

Just as other aboriginal groups have established constitutional self-governing rights to logging, fishing and hunting, the Alexander band could get a legal OK to host offshore Internet gambling firms if it can prove that wagering was a major part of their ancestral heritage, gaming-industry lawyer Michael Lipton said.

Several bands have failed at the Supreme Court and lower courts to have gambling declared as an inherent right. However, the most recent high court case in 1996 that upheld convictions against Ontario bands has helped set the test for what Alexander or other groups must prove to qualify for sovereignty over gambling, he said.

“If the facts exist to demonstrate that a rudimentary — very rudimentary — form of gambling exists, be it in the form of stones and sticks or beads or whatever the case may be, the law says that if they’ve got the facts, this is the law, they have to follow it,” said Lipton, head of an international association of gaming lawyers.

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REASON MAGAZINE::REASON ONLINE
Jacob Sullum, Senior Editor, Reason Magazine | February 7, 2007

Although Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre are charged with money laundering, there was nothing sneaky about their “conspiracy.” In 1999 the two Canadians co-founded Neteller, an online payment processing company, now based in the Isle of Man, that openly specialized in serving online gamblers.

The FBI’s investigation of Lawrence and Lefebvre, who were arrested last month and face a preliminary hearing in New York next week, consisted mainly of reading their public statements and using Neteller to bet on a couple of football games—a vice that in this country has to rank up there with eating a second slice of Mom’s apple pie while listening to The Star-Spangled Banner. Yes, the feds really blew the lid off this publicly traded company that never made a secret of who its customers were or what it did for them.

The impressive thing about the case, part of the Justice Department’s legally shaky crusade against online gambling, is not the evidence but the government’s sinister spin on it. The feds pretend they’re pursuing criminals while prosecuting honest businessmen for providing services Americans want.

The money laundering charges against Lawrence and Lefebvre—which carry prison sentences of up to 20 years, 10 times the maximum penalty for the offense they supposedly facilitated—are based on the government’s claim that Neteller transferred money into and out of the United States “with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity.” According to Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the “unlawful activity” was taking online bets from Americans, which he describes as “a colossal criminal enterprise masquerading as legitimate business.”

Others, including the millions of Americans who use the Internet to bet on sports or play games of chance, the companies that serve them, and the foreign governments that license and regulate the companies, see things differently. They see a legitimate business that bluenoses with badges are determined to tar as a criminal enterprise because they can’t stand the idea that somebody in Westchester County might be playing poker in his pajamas.

MORE
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE AT REASON MAGAZINE::REASON ONLINE

Caribbean Net News
Friday, February 9, 2007

ST JOHN’S, Antigua: Antigua and Barbuda’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission, Division of Gaming has announced that the country expects to play a key role in developing international regulations and legislation for remote gambling following publication of the UK Government’s communique regarding the 2006 International Summit on Remote Gambling.

The communique, released by the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on Monday 29th January, highlighted the approval by the Summit’s delegates for the proposal to set up an expert working group to advise on the scope for developing international minimum standards for regulating remote gambling.

Errol Cort, Antigua and Barbuda’s Minister of Finance and the Economy, commented, “Antigua offers its unique experience and insight wholeheartedly in developing regulatory standards for the international remote gambling industry as part of the expert working group proposed by the DCMS.”

Kaye McDonald, Antigua’s Director of Gaming, also highlighted Antigua’s credentials for regulation of their online gambling industry, adding, “The regulations that Antigua has in place for online gambling are respected globally and have been a contributing factor in winning the WTO ruling against the US in 2005.”

It is widely known that regulations put in place by Antigua and Barbuda are more stringent than those that the US imposes on its own legal gambling industries.

The US recently admitted suffering a new setback in the long running trade dispute with Antigua over the provision of offshore gambling within the United States, having, according to the press agent for the United States Trade Representative, been on the losing side of a recent WTO report assessing the status of US compliance with the original adverse ruling from the WTO issued in 2005.

While the new report is not officially released until mid February, the US has already publicly stated that the WTO panel did not agree with the United States that they had taken the necessary steps to comply.

CANADA.com
Jason Markusoff, Shawn Ohler, CanWest News Svc; Edmonton Journal
Thursday, February 08, 2007

EDMONTON - A northern Alberta First Nation that is offering to host online casinos is under investigation by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission.

The commission says it will crack down on what it deems would be illegal gambling.

Alexander First Nation, just north of Edmonton, announced last October that its own gambling commission will regulate and offer licences to Internet gambling operators - based on the notion that the treaty band can derive powers from its own gambling law, separate from Alberta or Canadian laws.

The AGLC’s top official said he’s seen no sign of online casinos or poker programs operating yet, but is watching closely.

Norm Peterson, the provincial regulator’s CEO, said Alexander “hasn’t done anything” beyond creating a website that appears to solicit interest from would-be online casinos. The band also issued a press release, heralding its rules that would allow “a safe, high quality environment for on-line gamers.”

But when asked if the AGLC would shut down any online casinos that might eventually operate in connection with the nascent Alexander body, Peterson said: “Yes, it’s illegal under the Criminal Code, and we would take action like any other illegal activity under the Criminal Code.

“Internet gaming, unless it’s conducted by the province or licensed by the (AGLC), is illegal.”

Preparing to accommodate western Canada’s first online gambling operations, Alexander is building a 2,300-square-metre data centre on its territory, which will host the gambling websites’ computer servers.

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