Indian Allows US Authorities To Seize Money

It seems that authorities in the US states are simply not ready to learn anything from past mistakes. United States has prohibited casinos for many years now and prosecuted a lot of violators, even as the overseas casinos keep making a lot of money from their US based clients. The land-based casinos in the country have also been asking the authorities to change the legislation for quite some time, as revenues in Casinos located in Atlantic City continue to plummet for several years. Strangely however, online gambling has never been actually banned in the US, and now states such as Florida and New Jersey are even thinking of changing the legislation to virtual casinos operate allow them to be set up on American soil.

However it now seems that the authorities are becoming more pro-active. In a recent development, the authorities are slapping cases against people on the Wire Act Law. In other words, online gamblers in the US who are transferring money through international wire transfers are being charged for infringement, for violating the Wire Act Law.

The US authorities are making a lot of money by doing this. Recently, a man of Indian origin Anurag Dikshit, who owns Party Gaming, one of the biggest online casinos in the world, was charged the whooping sum of $300 million when the US authorities found out that he was into online poker. The casino websites that he operates are however all based in Gibraltar. Dikshit did not however challenge the charge. He simply allowed the money to be confiscated because by doing this, he was able to stay away from a jail sentence, the charge being the carrying out of illegal activities under the current laws.

Since then, he has sold of the Party Gaming business and has given away his vast wealth as charity to The Kusuma Trust, which is also by the way owned by him and his wife. Anurag Dikshit at the age of 37 years was once Gibraltar’s richest man and the 701^st richest in the world.

Several other Internet casino entrepreneurs have however criticized Dikshit for allowing the authorities to seize his money so easily. But he is not alone who took this stance. Douglas Rennick, who is from Canada, also made a similar arrangement with the authorities in the US. He allowed the federal people to take away US $17 million. On the other hand, PokerStars.com did not allow this to happen, and argue that no law had been violated in their operations. The Internet casino entrepreneurs are now saying that the stance taken by PokerStars.com is the correct one.

Some observers are thus saying that though online casinos are not allowed to operate in the US, but the authorities have still benefited greatly from them. And it certainly seems like that as the authorities insist on using the Wire Act Law to charge those steep financial penalties with the threat of a jail sentence looming large. A lot of money is currently going into the government as the authorities are constantly on the lookout trying to locate the supposed illegal money transactions.