UIGEA Coming To Town Soon

Filed in archive Poker News on May 31, 2007

Cardplayer's Allyn Jaffrey Shulman provides some insight into the pending UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) implementation as the 270 day time limit to prescribe regulation looms near.

Online poker sites have already taken different measures with the fallout of the biggest poker money transfer site, Neteller, to use alternative means of withdrawing and depositing into their sites. Now with the new laws coming in, it would cramp those who have resorted to using things like VISA gift cards and phone cards to bet their chips on an AK suited when the board fails to pair them on the flop.

Since people like Senator Kyl believe it's the government's right to judge what people should and shouldn't spend their money on, he is pressuring the currently embattled Attorney General to making these social laws sink some teeth into people who loves to play cards.

From Cardplayer's blog, here's a piece of Shulman's break down of the recent hearing on the UIGEA's recent senate hearing, read the article here:

Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act
After many years of failed efforts, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was finally snuck through Congress in late 2006. As we all now know, the bill does not make online poker illegal nor does the bill change gaming law. What it does is to make it more make it more difficult to get money into a site by forbidding U.S. financial Institutions from funding the type of online gambling that the law has previously made illegal.

270 Days
The UIGEA requires the Secretary and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in consultation with the Attorney General, to prescribe regulations to identify and block transactions to online gaming sites within 270 days of October 13, 2006, when President Bush signed the bill into law.
When time limits are involved, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule 6 usually requires us not to count the very day from which the designated period of time begins to run nor the weekend if the time limit ends on a weekend. My calculations makes July 10 the compliance date.

The Process
The process of making rules and regulations so that banks know which transactions to reject falls naturally upon two entities, the Federal Reserve and the Attorney General's office.
The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States, founded by Congress in 1913, for the purpose of providing our nation with a safe, flexible, and stable financial system. Its unique structure includes a federal government agency, the Board of Governors, and 12 regional Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve is the logical starting place for creating bank regulations because that is one of its ordinary tasks.
However, it is the job of the Attorney General's office to prosecute crimes. To do that, this arm of the government investigates and is held to have knowledge regarding possible criminal activity. The AG's office investigates such things as online gaming. Together the two entities have been charged with creating procedures to prohibit the funding of online gaming sites....