- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
The Tennessean
By PAUL KUHARSKY
Staff WriterThe high school kid on a laptop might be downloading Eminem. The homemaker in the den might be researching remodeling. The businessman behind his closed office door might be checking stocks.
But today’s Internet surfers, especially the ones in a setting offering plenty of privacy, might also be placing bets in the burgeoning world of online sports betting, where point spreads for tonight’s game and ”action” on it are readily available.
In 2002 online gambling accounted for $1.3 billion in revenue, according to the Interactive Gaming Council, a group advocating regulation and licensing of online gaming. In 2003, 12.2 million people were expected to gamble online, and of those, six million were expected to wager on sports.
Numerous opportunities to bet online offer a potent combination of access, anonymity and solitude that can blur the lines of what’s legal and provide fertile ground from which gambling problems can grow.
”The anonymity, the secretiveness, the convenience has made betting a lot bigger problem than it has been,” said John Eades, a counseling psychologist, gambling addict and Methodist minister in Murfreesboro.
Feel the itch to place a bet in the middle of the night? In pajamas and in minutes, with an Internet connection and an online account, it can be scratched.
While the Justice Department holds a firm stance that online betting is illegal, even legislation being debated in Washington would be hard-pressed to get a complete handle on the widespread online business since the sites are based outside the U.S.
”It is by far the most prevalent form of gambling in America that’s ‘not authorized,’ ” said UNLV public administration professor Bill Thompson, who’s
written eight books on gambling, including Gambling in America: An Encyclopedia. ”There are well over 1,000 sites and for some reason, every time I put on my computer, a gambling ad for an online casino pops up. I have to erase it before I look at my email.”
Eades said he’s counseled a local woman who lost $45,000 placing online bets with as many as 15 different credit cards. Her husband left her over it.
”They couldn’t climb out of the debt she put them in,” he said.
Getting action
The online gambling industry is based primarily in the Caribbean and Central America. Some sites come and go, but big, stable ones handle a lot of money and will offer a line on just about anything. They generally have much higher limits than the sports books in Las Vegas.
Simon Noble is from England and lives in Antigua, where he is CEO of BetWWTS.com. The company is publicly traded in Australia and handled $540 million of business last year, making roughly $20 million in profit. His company pays 30% in corporate taxes in Australia, he said.
His book won’t deal in the macabre — a pool betting on which aging celebrity will die first, for example. He said his book won’t touch high school or little league games.
But everything else, from the Academy Awards to the Grammys, from Survivor to The Bachelor, is fair game in addition to more standard game bets and Super Bowl propositions.
”Literally we’ll accept a bet on anything,” Noble said.
Dave Sharapan remembers seeing an available bet for whether the Dow Jones Industrial average would finish above or below a certain number on a specific day.
In the late ’90s, Sharapan left his job as a sports producer for a Pittsburgh TV station and went to Curacao to work for ABCIsland.com. He said his 16 months on the job were akin to working the sports book at The Mirage in Las Vegas, which is where he’s moving now.
He said crackdowns by credit card companies for gambling transactions won’t dent the offshore gaming industry, because there are always new online avenues to get money into accounts. Make a call, open an account and ”you have a number and a password once the money is secured,” he said.
”One day Western Union wasn’t available,” he said. ”By the end of that day, we had a different way for people to send us money. I think people who want to bet are going to find a way to do it. Online sports books are a step ahead of everything.”
With credit card companies looking to avoid gambling transactions, setting up accounts is not as easy as it used to be. Still with a bank transfer, a check or online services like NetTeller it can usually be done. And once a person has money in one account at an offshore sports book, it’s usually easy to transfer it to others.
New dangers for kids
Surf the Web long enough, chances are a person will find an easy avenue to a site that accepts bets. Those pop-up ads, along with press releases and radio ads plugging sites, all contribute to ”mainstreaming it and implying it’s legal,” said Keith Whyte, the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling.
Most gamblers are responsible, Whyte emphasized. But roughly 3% of the general adult population and 6% of kids are not, and develop a gambling problem. Between 6 million and 8 million new adult gambling addicts emerge each year, he said.
Web gambling is clearly opening a new door to kids who might not otherwise be exposed to the possibilities of betting.
Whyte cited a study by the Institute for Adolescent Risk Communication of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania released in April that found 54% of boys between ages 14 and 18 said they had gambled for money and 10% said they had gambled on the Internet.
Nashville public libraries and Metro Schools are required under the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) to have filters on computers that access the Web. Still, a schools spokesperson was able to access an offshore betting site that did not have an address that gave away its content.
At Nashville’s Magness Potter Boys & Girls Club, gambling sites are among those that are blocked in the computer lab.
At the Nashville-based Students Taking a Right Stand, director of student assistant services Stephanie Davis said she’s not encountered the problem of kids gambling.
”But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” she said. ”It’s another thing parents need to be aware of as kids access the Internet.”
In many ways, online sports gambling has helped expand and redraw the picture of bettors and problem bettors.
”People picture a guy in a pinkie ring with a big chain and his shirt open, driving a flashy Cadillac,” Eades said. ”People don’t realize now that it’s really a kid in a T-shirt at the mall who is $100,000 in debt on his credit cards.”
The legislative debate
Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) was at the head of a group of legislators behind a push to erase any doubts that Internet gambling is illegal by writing a stronger law, but that bill appears to have fizzled.
Another bill out of the House of Representatives remains alive. It would make it illegal to use credit cards, checks or other banking instruments to pay for online wagers.
Already, under the 1961 Wire Communications Act, the Justice Department says federal law prohibits gambling over the Internet. That law has been aimed at people who take bets, not people who make them, said Nelson Rose, a professor at the Whittier School of Law and an expert on gambling law.
Court interpretations have made it clear the law covers sports betting, but not necessarily online casinos, Rose said.
Jay Cohen, who moved from the U.S. to Antigua to found a web site called World Sports Exchange, was charged with breaking that law when he returned to the U.S. He was convicted to 21 months and lost an appeal. His story was featured on 60 Minutes.
Cohen may be the poster boy for the pitfalls of the business side of online gambling, but the vast majority of web sites and gamblers have no such legal or media attention.
Many gamblers The Tennessean spoke to said they consider the legal issues to be hypocritical in light of legal sports books operating in Las Vegas and state-run lotteries around the country.
In North Dakota in August, Jeffery Trauman pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges brought by the state. A professional gambler who earned more betting than he did as a car salesman, Trauman paid a $500 fine and moved to Kentucky, where state laws regarding gambling are less severe.
”He’s the only person in the history of the world arrested for making a bet on the Internet,” Rose said. ”That one didn’t have any impact. It’s a fluke and nobody cares about it.”
Tennessee law says gambling, any sort of betting, is illegal. Davidson Country District Attorney Tory Johnson said he’s not aware of any betting prosecutions.
”John Q. Public out there, it would very hard to stumble upon,” Johnson said. ”The punishment is relatively minor and it’s a question of how much time and effort do you want to devote to something like that.”
Johnson said betting is a C-level misdemeanor, which is the lowest level, and that the maximum punishment is a 30-day sentence.
”I don’t see sheriff departments going out and making many busts,” said Whyte, of the National Council on Problem Gaming.
Whyte said whether gambling is legal or not, his group just wants to help those with problems. Still, Whyte, like Eades, struggles to understand how illegal gambling goes largely unpoliced. They also take issue with newspapers such as The Tennessean, which print point spreads.
”I don’t see much other use for it except to facilitate betting,” Whyte said. ”I don’t think you are printing the price of hookers or crack cocaine … Maybe papers can at least print a help line too.”
Support for regulation
UNLV’s Thompson said hardening laws to make online gambling illegal is a nice idea that simply can’t work.
While legalizing gambling and regulating it in a way where the government could take in tax revenue is a practical solution, it’s not a political one, he said.
So Thompson expects there will be modest controls involving banks and credit card companies, and people who really want to bet or play online will continue to do so.
”The best they can do is slow it down,” Thompson said.
”What’s happening now is definitely not working,” said Keith Furlong, deputy director of the Interactive Gaming Council. ”Without the oversight of the government, you can’t weed out the bad people. It’s like the Wild West.
”Regulation would provide consumer protection for the Internet to continue to move forward. If you have gaming, why discriminate against one medium of bringing it to people if in fact there is a demand for it?”
Recently at least one online sports book, Blue Marlin Sports, shut down. What sort of recourse do people with money in accounts there have?
”Good luck,” said Rose, who frequently gets email through his site, gamblingandthelaw.com, from people complaining about sites that have not paid them for bets they’ve won or that they can’t get the money in their account back from an offshore sports book.
Trying to lure Blue Marlin customers, other online sites have offered increased bonuses for opening a new account.
More options, more problems
According to Eades, gambling addicts have a higher suicide rate than any other kind of addicts — two of 10 try to take their lives. He said he lost a friend who’d embezzled money from his office to bet.
He fears that online gambling is creating more problems.
”What is happening is we’re making it more convenient to develop addicts in this country,” he said.
Thompson said while the online gambling industry is still blossoming, it will soon reach a saturation point.
”In the near future there is more growth, he said. ”But eventually there’ll be a cap on it.”
That won’t do much to help the problem gambler facing temptation. Problem gamblers who spoke to The Tennessean said the online sites make it way too easy to bet, way too easy for a bettor to conceal his actions to those around him.
One member of Gamblers Anonymous described it as an avalanche that gets worse and worse ”until you realize you are powerless.”
Paul Kuharsky is a staff writer for The Tennessean.
