Backstage & Influences



The AGA desires the Senate to ask US Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch about her plans to enforce rules against illegal gambling at her confirmation hearing this week.

How does Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch feel about illegal gambling activity? The American Gaming Association (AGA) wants to locate away.

The Attorney General (AG) of the United States has significant value to the gambling industry, after all.

Decisions on just how to interpret and prosecute laws around gambling, especially unlawful gambling, can have a big effect on the industry and specific players alike: just ask every online poker player who lost or struggled to regain their funds following the Black Friday indictments in 2011.

Maybe that’s why the American Gaming Association desires the Senate to have a very long hard look at how the next attorney basic plans to manage illegal gambling laws. Geoff Freeman, president and CEO associated with AGA, has urged the Senate to judge US Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch’s commitment to enforcing such rules during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing.

AGA Would Like to Hear Lynch on Illegal Sports Betting

‘We urge one to make sure the next attorney general takes seriously the problem of illegal gambling across the country,’ Freeman wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the leading minority member of the committee.

In particular, Freeman wants to know what Lynch will do in order to enforce regulations against illegal recreations wagering. That’s been issue that Freeman has spoken about extensively in the run-up to the Super Bowl, a conference that will see an estimated $3.8 billion wagered on it illegally. That dwarfs the $100 million or therefore that may be bet in the game lawfully in Las Vegas.

Lynch is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York since 2010. That put her responsible for federal prosecutions on Long Island and in three boroughs of New York City.

Certainly one of her most notable gambling-related situations included the indictment of 25 people who were accused of running an illegal sports gambling operation in Queens, the sort of crackdown likely to please Freeman yet others who want illegal sports wagering limited as much as possible.

Online Gambling Questions Also Feasible

If gambling does become a topic of conversation during the confirmation hearings, additionally it is possible that Internet gambling questions could be raised.

It’s clearly a subject of interest at this time: several states are looking at gambling that is online (along with three that currently offer casino and/or poker games over the Internet), and Sheldon Adelson among others have actually pressed for a nationwide ban on Internet video gaming.

One sponsor of an Internet gambling ban, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, making questions that are such the more likely.

But questions over the legality of online gambling had beenn’t specifically mentioned by Freeman in his page. This is simply not surprising, once the AGA announced last year that it would officially stay from the online gambling debate due to having prominent members on both edges of the problem.

Lynch was nominated ahead of various other prospects on President Barack Obama’s short list, one that allegedly contained another title that online gambling fans understand: Preet Bharara. The case that began with 11 indictments on Black Friday on April 15, 2011 as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Bharara was the prosecutor who initiated United States v. Scheinberg.

Current US AG Eric Holder will vacate his place as soon being a new attorney general is confirmed by the Senate.

A program that allowed police more leeway in seizing cash and property during arrests: a policy particularly dangerous to poker players who may carry large bankrolls in cash in their cars while Holder has not spearheaded any major initiatives related to gambling, he did recently put an end to some ‘equitable seizure’ agreements between the federal government and local police departments.

Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch Grilled by RAWA Spearheader Lindsey Graham on Online Gambling Views

US AG nominee Loretta Lynch at yesterday’s hearing. Despite being quizzed by Senator Lindsey Graham, she refused to be drawn down on the concern of on the web gambling. (Image: cbsnewyork.com)

Loretta Lynch nicely sidestepped the issue of online gambling when quizzed about the subject at yesterday’s United States Attorney General confirmation hearing.

The question was placed to the AG nominee by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among the co-sponsors of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA). RAWA seeks to ban all forms of online gambling on a level that is federal aside from betting horseracing and dream sports.

Lynch told Graham that so she was ‘not able to analyze it’ for him while she was ‘generally familiar’ with the DoJ’s controversial 2011 legal interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act, she ‘had not read the decision’ and.

The DoJ’s reinterpretation of the act and its legal opinion that the Wire Act prohibits just sports betting over the Web effectively exposed the home for the state-by state regulation of on line poker and on-line casino gaming, a decision that RAWA seeks to overturn.

Diplomatic Answers

Graham responded before he had delivered his parting shot that he would send Lynch relevant material on the subject, but not.

‘Would you agree certainly one of the best ways for the terrorist organization or an unlawful enterprise in order to enrich themselves is to have online gaming that could be very difficult to regulate?’ he asked the nominee.

‘What we’ve seen with respect to those that provide material help and financing to terrorist companies is they will use any methods to finance those businesses,’ reacted Lynch, diplomatically.

Despite what might have seemed to be a testy interchange, Graham was reported to be ‘inclined’ to support Lynch’s nomination after what he tweeted was an ‘excellent and powerful opening declaration.’

AGA Has a Stance

It is not just the anti-online gambling faction that is clamoring to know Lynch’s views on the issue, either.

Even as we reported earlier in the week, Geoff Freeman, chairman of the American Gaming Association (AGA), recently wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the leading minority member of the committee, exhorting them to opt for a new AG who is prepared to handle the issue of illegal gambling within the United States.

‘We urge you to definitely make certain the next attorney general takes seriously the issue of unlawful gambling across the country,’ Freeman published.

Freeman is anxious to draw the titanic slot machine game attention of politicians to the scale of illegal sports betting, which he believes can be an argument for wider regulation and legalization. The AGA recently estimated that at least $3.8 billion is wagered illegally on Sunday’s Super Bowl by People in the us throughout the country.

Renewed Push from Adelson

Meanwhile, reports claim that Sheldon Adelson has met privately with Republican members of the home Judiciary Committee in an effort to renew the push to prohibit online gambling after it faltered year that is last. This may explain Graham’s eagerness to publicly grill the AG that is new candidate.

Both sponsors of RAWA have actually came back to Washington with more power and influence than they held year that is last. Both now sit on their chamber’s judiciary committees, while Graham is now a known member of the Republican majority and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) ended up being recently made chairman for the Government Oversight and Reform Committee.

Match-Fixing, Honey Traps, and Blackmail: Just Not the Cricket World Cup

Heath Mills, leader regarding the Cricket Players Association, warns that players are in risk from predatory betting syndicates who may seek to blackmail them into illegally influencing matches during the forthcoming World Cup. (Image: cricketcountry.com)

The Cricket World Cup is almost upon us, but before half the world stops reading, let us remind you that this story is mostly about glamorous femme fatales, blackmail, unlawful betting syndicates and match-fixing. Therefore stick to us.

As Australia and brand new Zealand prepare to host the future international championships, Heath Mills, the leader for the Cricket Players Association (CPA), has said he believes wagering syndicates will make an effort to influence the upshot of matches.

He has warned players about the dangers of falling prey to traps that are honey blackmail.

The wagering syndicates are becoming ever more devious within their methods, and Mills is taking this danger so really that he has prepared a 90-minute presentation on match-fixing for the advantage of the players.

‘Always a Married Man’

‘I have no question that match groups that are fixing be looking at New Zealand and they have had people on the ground in New Zealand formerly,’ said Mills, who added that players had been usually groomed for decades before the trap was set. ‘The honey trap might be part of the process that is grooming there are compromising images … They may notice the person has family problems, or they might notice they’ve got economic issues or psychological state issues, which they can jeopardize to expose.’

Mills said that New Zealand’s players were particularly at risk because many of them were only semi-professional and relatively low paid.

The CPA, he added, had been contacted on numerous occasions within the decade that is past players who thought they’d been approached by match-fixers.

New Zealand Racing Board TAB spokesman Mark Stafford, whoever organization is co-sponsoring the initiative, recounted the tale of a player who had met a lady who claimed to represent a major brand.

The player signed a ‘sponsorship’ deal and she took him to an accommodation that had been fitted out with secret cameras.

‘It’s always a married man in those situations,’ Stafford explained.

Spot-fixing

In 2010, three members of the Pakistan national team, including its fast bowler Mohammad Amir, were embroiled in a ‘spot-fixing’ scandal when they had been found to be part of a plot to bowl a series of ‘no balls’ throughout the Lord’s Test against England.

They received prison sentences and were banned from the game.

The increase of in-play online wagering, where clients can bet on practically every part of a match, has made the exploitation of these seemingly innocuous moments in games, including the quantity of ‘no balls’ in a cricket match, increasingly possible in the last few years.

Meanwhile, Australia authorities said it had cleverness that players were already planning to influence matches on behalf of the syndicates.

Match fixing became a crime in New Zealand last year, as a result of the passage through of the Crimes (Match Fixing) Amendment Bill.

This offered police extra powers to research suspicious incidences and set a maximum penalty of seven years in jail for those convicted.

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