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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Online betting chief held in US

~~This is what a police state looks like.~~

UPDATE: Carruthers seems to have been nabbed in an effort to crack down on exsisting laws, not in an attempt to enforce the will of Congress.

"The online gaming industry has been alive to the risks of dealing with customers in the U.S. because they have known that it may have been illegal,'' Doobay said. ``What they have been comforted by to date is that there hasn't been very much inclination to prosecute in the U.S.''

DAVID Carruthers, chief executive of online gaming group BETonSPORTS, has been detained by US authorities while changing planes.

"While changing flights in the United States en route from the UK to Costa Rica, David Carruthers, chief executive of BETonSPORTS Plc was detained by US federal authorities," the company said in a statement.

Mr Carruthers was in custody in Fort Worth, Texas, after a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Missouri returned a 22-count indictment charging 11 individuals and four corporations on various charges of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud, the US Department of Justice said in a statement. "This indictment is but one step in a series of actions designed to punish and seize the profits of individuals who disregard federal and state laws."

Last week Mr Carruthers told Reuters he thought that a US Republican-written, House of Representatives-approved Bill to crack down on internet gambling by banning banks and credit-card companies from processing the payments was bound to fail due to the mountainous backlog of other US legislation.

posted by jason # 2:42 PM