Utah Site of Online Gambling Bust
December 12, 2009
Utah is the place you think of for Sundance or possibly even multiple wives – but it is not the place you think of when you think of online gambling. In fact, the state is pretty dead set against online gambling ever coming into their state. They have already put forward the legislation to make online gambling illegal even if the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA is overturned.
That is why it came as such a surprise to both law enforcement officials and the nation that an online gambling ring would be going on in the one state that is dead set against having it there. Police received a tip that the Fortune Cyber Café in Murray, Utah was running an illegal online gambling establishment. They decided to go undercover to see what it was all about.
Sure enough, after months of investigating, police arrested five people in conjunction with illegal online gambling at the café. Each of the five that were arrested had a past criminal history, and each of them was charged with felony counts of money laundering. Police said that this raid was much like others in the past – and that they had seen several of them lately where the same kind of illegal online gambling was taking place.
They ran the illegal online gambling by having people purchase time on a card and then used that card to play at the computers. This in itself is not illegal, but allowing those patrons to go on the various online gambling games was illegal and they found themselves in a whole lot of trouble for it.
