Playing Online Poker for real money...

[BirdOPrey5]

I know this is technically illegal in the USA but it happens all the time- thousands if not millions of people play online poker for real money... I know people who claim to have made over a hundred thousand dollars over the course of a few years by playing online. They said they cash a check for a few thousand dollars every so often and it's never raised any red flags.

How dangerous is this? What would the penalty be if "caught?" How would one get caught anyway, it's not like their are FBI agents stalking poker sites looking for US IP addresses.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I know this is technically illegal in the USA but it happens all the time- thousands if not millions of people play online poker for real money... I know people who claim to have made over a hundred thousand dollars over the course of a few years by playing online. They said they cash a check for a few thousand dollars every so often and it's never raised any red flags.

How dangerous is this? What would the penalty be if "caught?" How would one get caught anyway, it's not like their are FBI agents stalking poker sites looking for US IP addresses.

Most people that come here talk about losing thousands of dollars playing poker online. Everyone talks... how much is true, I don't know. FBI agents do many things. When I was younger, one of my friends ran a pirate BBS and attracted the attention of an FBI agent who wanted to prosecute them - which just resulted in the kid shutting down his site. If they did that long ago I'm sure they do more now. How often they prosecute - I don't know.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Do the people who have lost money ever complain about being in legal trouble? I mean, if you think about it if you play and lose that should be "more" illegal than playing and winning, because if you lose you've transferred US money out of the country... if you happen to win more than you lose you aren't making any foreign entities wealthy on US currency.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Do the people who have lost money ever complain about being in legal trouble? I mean, if you think about it if you play and lose that should be "more" illegal than playing and winning, because if you lose you've transferred US money out of the country... if you happen to win more than you lose you aren't making any foreign entities wealthy on US currency.

Those who lose money are already punished. It's the entities making the money that benefit. As they say, you can't get blood from a stone - what's the point in fining a gambler who now gambled away all of his assets? People who have lost money usually complain about the poker site being a scam and that is how they lost their money.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

I don't know, in my experience just because a crime failed to result in monetary gain it usually still gets prosecuted... Although a Google search tells me no one in the country has ever been prosecuted under the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act" passed in 2006.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I don't know, in my experience just because a crime failed to result in monetary gain it usually still gets prosecuted... Although a Google search tells me no one in the country has ever been prosecuted under the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act" passed in 2006.

There aren't nearly enough law enforcement personnel and money to prosecute everyone. The small fish almost always get through as this takes effort to prosecute. It's not like someone was picked up for shoplifting.