Terrorism and Online Gambling
February
13, 2010
So it appears that there
may be some connection between online gambling and terrorism. There is a
recent report from the “Cybercrime in Betting and Gambling” conference
in London that said that there was a tie in between online gambling and
terrorism. According to Robert Mitchell, the Director of World Check,
there were compromised credit cards being used to fund terrorism.
Tariq al-Daour has links to al-Qaeda, and is considered their “godfather
of cyber-terrorism.” He was recently convicted of inciting murder
through website exhortations along with two of his associates, Waseem
Meghal and Younes Tsouli.” They men also used Windows based Trojans to
steal credit card numbers, and then used the online gambling sites to
launder the money that they stole from the credit cards. Mitchell said
that there are currently at least 23 different investigations going on
that link online gambling money laundering to these terrorist factions.
The trio had more than 190 credit cards between them that they had been
using for this terrorist laundering. He said that the investigations are
continuing because they are not sure how wide spread this is within the
online gambling arena just yet. However, this is bad news for the online
gambling proponents because up until now it has just been talk as it
relates to terrorism and online gambling – this is the first proof they
have of them being related. The online gambling opponents are quick to
say that this is exactly what they have been talking about.
But online gambling proponents say that this is the perfect reason why
online gambling should be legalized and regulated. They said that it
exists as an illegal entity right now where people can take advantage of
it. With more checks and balances it would not be as simple to rip off
people through the use of it.
