Proposed California Bill to Determine Online Poker Legality

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, has introduced a bill in California that will study the legality of intrastate online poker in California. The bill is designed to evaluate the potential for California to establish and regulate online poker within the state while still being within the legal bounds of the UIGEA. “Our understanding of the law is that so long as the player and server (hosting the online game) are in California, it would be legal,” said Levine. “But that’s what we are trying to find out.”

If bill AB2026 passes and an intrastate framework for online poker is deemed legal, it could open the door for not only California, but other states and Indian sovereignties as well. Whether potential California operators would come from B&M card room operators, the state itself, or existing online operators willing to set-up a California-only infrastructure is unknown. Levine cares less about the potential make-up of a resulting industry and more about the feasibility of the state to allow online poker within a legal and regulated framework. “It would be regulated,” said Levine. “We don’t know what the state’s piece will be, but it will be a regulated entity.”

The bill is being sponsored by a group called the Poker Players of America (PPOA). The PPOA’s website identifies the organization’s founders only as “experienced political professionals who also play poker.” The domain name’s web administer is listed as Nancy Todd, a political consultant and president of Nancy Todd, Inc., an international strategic consulting firm based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

While poker players across the state may be bolstered by this development, probably none so much as Anthony Sandstrom, a.k.a. Tuff Fish. Over the years, Sandstrom has single-handedly attempted to pass initiatives that would establish a legal framework for online poker in California. While Sandstrom is known for suffering brutal poker suckouts, prominently featured in his self-deprecatingly funny YouTube videos, he might finally see a winning hand when it comes to a regulated online poker industry in California.

Full Tilt and Other Gambling Properties the Target of DDoS Attacks

For the past couple of days, many online poker and casino properties have suffered outages. Full Tilt Poker was probably the most visible of these outages, as their web site was inaccessible for a couple of days. As of 5 am EST on Tuesday, their web site is redirecting to www2.fulltiltpoker.com.

It now appears that the reason for their outages over the past couple of days can be attributed to a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.

According to Wikipedia, a DDoS attack involves “saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.”

In this case, it appears as though Full Tilt’s servers and others in the industry have been saturated by “tons of bogus GET requests” (source link below).

According to the sourced article, the attacks started around February 10th and continued all the way up until February 18th.

There were a large list of targets, including:

Full Tilt Poker, Party Casino, Titan Poker, Virgin Games, CD Poker and Europa Casino. In addition, a number of Russian online gambling sites were targeted, including Pokerlistings.ru.

The extent of the outages for each site varied depending on the ferocity of the attacks and if they had any anti-DDoS attack measures in place. Full Tilt Poker is clearly still having issues while a number of the Russian web properties are still down. I am assuming that Full Tilt’s software outages over the past few days are related to these attacks as well. Full Tilt’s poker room has crashed numerous times over the past few days, including an embarrassing outage during the final table of the FTOPS main event.

The motive behind the attacks is still unknown. Was there an extortion attempt made? Will there be an extortion attempt made? Or is there some other reason behind the attacks?

Online Gambling Sites Linked to MOB?!?!?

February 8th, 2008

Offshore internet gambling played a vital role in supporting the criminal enterprises of the Gambino family, US officials said, in the latest evidence of the connections between the industry and organised crime.

An illegal sports gambling operation was based on at least four websites run in Costa Rica, as well as toll-free telephone numbers and a network of wire rooms, traditional bookies and debt collectors, according to the Queens district attorney.

Websites such as betallsports.com and betoffshore.net allegedly helped net “Gambino organised crime family gambling” operation almost $10m in wagers over two years.

The case is just one of a number of recent prosecutions that have connected the world of organised crime with online gambling.

“It’s a moneymaker for organised crime,” said Richard Brown, the Queens district attorney.

“Illegal gambling has always been the bread-and-butter moneymaker for organised crime because of the huge profits that it generates, which can be used to fund other more insidious forms of criminal activity, such as labour racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and…loan sharking.”

Twenty people were arrested over the alleged illegal gambling operation, as well as in relation to alleged prostitution and loan sharking crimes, on Thursday.

Nicholas Corrozzo, a 67-year-old Mafia “captain”, whose brother Joseph “Miserable” Corrozzo was the alleged consigliere to the Gambino family, ran the gambling business, according to Mr Brown.

Nicholas Corrozzo, also known as “The Little Guy” and “The Doctor”, is separately charged with ordering the double murder of Robert Arena “to settle a beef” and Thomas Maranga in 1996, by the US attorney for the eastern district of New York and is still on the run.

In 1976 he attended the wake of Carlo Gambino, the founder of the New York Mafia family, according to court documents.

Last year the Financial Times revealed that Betonsports, the publicly listed British online gambling company that went bust after being charged with illegal gambling and racketeering, had been linked by US prosecutors to a website that employed members of the Gambino family to collect debts.

The Bestlinesports.com website was one of a number of websites “belonging to or controlled by” Betonsports, according to an indictment from the US attorney in Missouri.

“There’s a connection between what’s happening online and organised crime,” said John Pistole, of the FBI. “La Cosa Nostra has business acumen: if there’s a way to make money without resorting to violence they will.”