That's left something of a vacuum in federal laws dealing with gambling on the Internet. The only law with jurisdiction is the Wire Act, and its application to Internet gaming is still being defined. The Justice Department has taken the position this applies to Internet casino games. If that opinion is put into practice, Nevada casinos could face a flood of federal criminal indictments if they tried to put their gambling products in cyberspace. Bobby Siller of the state Gaming Control Board says this needs to be addressed before he could support legalized Nevada Internet gambling, he said.
Sports betting on the Internet is illegal.
That was made clear last year when a federal jury in New York convicted Jay Cohen of violating the Wire Act by operating an Internet sports book in Antigua and accepting bets from the United States. That opinion suffered a blow last month in a federal court in New Orleans. In a class-action lawsuit, Visa and MasterCard were accused under racketeering law of aiding violations of the Wire Act by allowing credit cards to be used to accept bets at Internet casinos. In March U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. threw out these claims. Las Vegas gaming attorney Tony Cabot expects this decision to be appealed.