On Tuesday, a joint statement from some of the most respected authorities on security and privacy was released with a clear warning issued not only to online and mobile real-money gamers, but also to lawmakers considering an expansion of online gambling.
Those lending their expertise and signatures to the statement include:
- Michael K. Fagan, career federal prosecutor and post-911 anti-terrorism coordinator active in investigating and prosecuting illegal offshore online commercial gambling enterprises
- Earl L. Grinols, distinguished professor of economics at Baylor University, former senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers
- Jim Thackston, software engineer with a background in the aerospace, manufacturing and energy industries
- John Kindt, Professor of Business and Legal Policy, University of Illinois, Senior Editor, U.S. International Gaming Report
The FBI recently wrote Congress for the second time expressing the Agency’s concern that online gambling – including Internet poker – is vulnerable to money laundering and cheating and is a vehicle to bribe public officials and others. Online players can disguise both their location and identity and thereby fleece unsuspecting innocent participants.
In its September, 2013 letter, the FBI stated “Transnational organized crime (TOC) groups might exploit legal online gambling to generate revenue, steal personally identifiable information (PII), and engage in public corruption.”
“The FBI’s correspondence confirms what we have known for several years – that, despite the gambling industry’s claims to the contrary, there exists effective and non-detectable methods which can be used to anonymize a player’s identity and geo-location in order to corrupt a game and these threats will become more prevalent as more states race to embrace online gambling,” the joint statement reads.
As the FBI confirmed, “Individuals may use a wide variety of mechanisms to conceal their physical location, or give the appearance of operating in a different jurisdiction …”
Online poker attracts big money, the statement continues, largely reiterating that which is common knowledge.
“As recently demonstrated by American player Brian Hastings and his Swedish competitor half a world away, a single online poker game facilitated the international transfer of $5 million in mere hours,” the authors explain. “Accordingly, an established al-Qaida poker network could extract enough untraceable money from the United States in just a few days to fund several 9/11-sized attacks.”
The experts listed above are urging Congress to carefully consider all the consequences of legalized online gambling.
“No benefits outweigh these consequences,” they conclude. ” Online gambling’s legalization solves none of the problems cited by advocates and is sure to create many—including existential ones for America.”
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