"Sixty Minutes" Reminds US of Need for Online Casino Regulation
"Sixty Minutes" rebroadcast a report Sunday it first showed last fall that illustrated the harm possible if the online casino industry remains unregulated. The report, a result of a collaborative effort with the Washington Post, detailed the events leading up to and following the exposure of the Absolute Bet and Ultimate Poker online poker scandals.
The investigative news program discovered that, despite the problematic UIGEA Internet gamlng ban, gambling is still occurring by millions of US residents, only there is no protection available to prevent them from being scammed. Poker players patronizing the two sites had been cheated of an estimated $20 million, the result of tampering with software systems supposedly regulated by an agency directly involved with the sites' ownership.
Barney Frank's campaign to regulate online gambling received a major boost from the initial airing of the show, and Internet gaming patrons and operators alike are hopeful the repeat will do the same. Frank currently has a bill specifying exactly how the industry should be controlled pending in Congress, with a September hearing likely.
The scandals could have continued unabated, had not alert players used their own tracking results to confirm their suspicions that something was amiss. But, although refunds were made to players who had lost money in the cheating incidents, the Kahnawake authorities who regulate the sites and also operate them blamed the problems on previous ownership.
No transparent investigation was conducted, no perpetrators were charged with any crime, and players had only the word of the conflicted regulators that the poker sites are now clean and cheat-free.
Frank joined gaming experts as noting the cases cried for government oversight, and that to fail to do so would leave US consumers at the mercy of unscrupulous operators. Gambling analysts say that by replaying the report, CBS has helped refresh the public memory of the need to address the problem, just as the Frank bill nears Congressional review.
