Anti-UIGEA Initiative By Barney Frank Likely To Be Delayed

Casino News - August 27th, 2009 - Written by Glen

The United States currently faces several challenging issues within the halls of Congress, not the least of which is health care, economic troubles, and the raging war in the Middle East. The the snail like pace that Congress typically sticks with, the online gambling issue may be far from discussion.

Representative Barney Frank has been pushing an anti-UIGEA Bill for the whole year, being that the highest levels of government are predominantly Democrat, but already the issue has been delayed. While he intended on submitting the Bill early on in the year, it was pushed back several months, ultimately to be released during the month of May. On the Senate side, one Senator Menendez has put forth a Bill to legalize, at the very least, online poker.

Sadly, the current administration has been assaulting the online gambling industry harder than ever before. Arrests, indictments, and seizures have all been a regular occurrence throughout 2009, and hundreds of millions of dollars have already been seized. Coupled with the regular illegal gambling operations throughout the nation, the busts have been omnipresent.

While the law only prohibits a financial institution from processing online gambling transactions, the implications run as deep as the gamer him- or herself. While a player would never face legal interdiction, their banks may be targeted, or their pay out may be confiscated. That being said, players will not necessarily see lost winnings - any company that wouldn't keep their money to begin with will invariably cut their losses to keep the player happy. This has already happened with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, and both companies coughed up the money to the players who had lost their pay outs.

Congress is set to reconvene in early September, so even if you do not consider the death panels and the housing crisis, as well as the conflict in the Middle East, the earliest we will see the matter discussed is still weeks away.

Analysts predict that the law, should it be passed, will not come into play until 2010 - shortly after the UIGEA is supposed to go into full effect.

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