FBI Goes After FaceBook

March 27, 2008

It would seem that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a new target these days – and it would be the social network FaceBook. It seems that the online networking company is getting involved in a little online gambling, which of course is illegal in this country. They were running betting pools, which are a big no-no.

The idea of online gambling at online casinos, etc. has been taken to a whole new level per the FBI. The company was guilty of having office pools, etc. running on their site. However, instead of it being the fun and frivolous thing that it really is, the FBI have decided that this is online gambling at its worse and it could end up in the middle of a lawsuit.

It seems that the gambling is happening online, hence the term online gambling, and once money changes hands you are now guilty of a crime. There are many well known companies that have been sponsoring betting pools that let them play with friends in their social network – and under FaceBook guidelines they are called “tournament brackets.”

However, the FBI has taken it as a promotion of online gambling and they see it as the wide spread epidemic that it is bound to become. They have issued a warning to all online office pools that not only is online gambling illegal in the terms of office pools, etc. but that shortly having fun online in any form at all will be deemed illegal as well.

Seriously, it is a problem when something as simple as an office pool becomes a target of an FBI investigation. CBSSports was one of the companies guilty of allowing it and they said that promoting online gambling was not what they were trying to do, and they would look into it closely.




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