NatWest 3 Plea Could Have Affect on European Online Gambling Operators

We posted earlier about Tony Blair's shameful conduct of allowing his citizens to be snatched and held in the US for gambling crimes. The recent plea bargain of another group of UK citizens in a US court may have implications for upcoming gaming trials. The US has come down hard to force pleas on foreigners; just yesterday Gary Kaplan from BetonSports was denied bail. Gambling911 examines the issue:

"The greater UK business community is up in arms," points out Joe Brennan, Jr. of iMEGA.org. "How the US can unfairly reach into their country (Great Britain) to prosecute their people. This is a pretty big precedent being set."

And many now speculate that the NatWest 3 (plea bargained) and David Carruthers (still awaiting trial in the States) are just the beginning to a long string of arrests that could be coming down the pike.

Immediately following the Carruthers arrests, the online gambling community and those in the entire European business sector, were stunned to learn that a former Chairman of Sportingbet was taken into custody at New York's JFK Airport. Peter Dicks was wanted on an arrest warrant from the state of Louisiana. The warrant charges Mr. Dicks was running a gambling enterprise by computer, a crime under Louisiana law. Yet Dicks was hardly active on the Sportingbet board and was in the US on "unrelated" business.