Illinois Adds Online Gambling
August 13, 2009
The state of Illinois is moving ahead with their plans to see online gambling become legal in their state. They say that due to the provisions in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA that states are allowed to have intrastate online gambling and so they are taking advantage of that.
The state says that they have allowed a lot of gambling to go on in their borders and now they feel like they could make even more money by moving into the online gambling industry. They say that the Department of Justice does not have precedence over their state and as long as they don’t allow online gambling across state lines they have not broken any laws.
By moving their lottery and horse racing online they are going to have infinitely more money coming in to the state. It still has to be approved by the governor, but the race track option would allow the tracks to partner with various online gambling sites that would then take their bets for them by phone or computer.
The Illinois Lottery is also looking to come to the online gambling world but they did ask the US DOJ if it was legal before saying anything. The UIGEA specifically says that online gambling can occur with lotteries so they really didn’t have anything to worry about from the DOJ. However, when it comes time to process those payments they might find that they are having a hard time getting them through because of the ban on online gambling prohibiting payment processing.
