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Nitty-Gritty of Offshore Ban: 2

So the UIGEA has now passed into law and the offshore online casinos and gambling sites have little specific understanding of the UIGEA but realize that the wording of the act implies some weighty consequences for those sites that continue to accept US players. With the mass exodus from the US market, some online casino gambling sites chose to remain in the US market – after all what is the likelihood that this little piece of legislation will hold any real weight. Within just a couple of months the US Department of Justice froze the assets of the Neteller e-wallet company because the company was still illegally processing payments between the offshore illegal gambling sites and US players.

The Neteller saga was the first real case that the Department of Justice made concerning the UIGEA and boy did those actions have an affect on some of the other companies that were remaining in the market. Once the Neteller site ran into the major legal snafu with the US government many of the remaining online casinos bailed out of the market and instead focused their attention on other foreign markets. Neteller ended up paying a huge fine to the US government for its violation of the UGIEA ($136 million) and the company subsequently completely left the US market and struggled to regain company stability in the European online casino gambling market.

Meanwhile, Neteller is not the only company hit hard by the UIGEA – a huge portion of the offshore online casinos offering services to US players were devastated by the withdrawal from the market and many went under as a result of the loss of market. Others were forced to majorly restructure their business before regaining stability. And still other online gambling sites are actually still struggling to this day because the US government is threatening legal action on some of the sites for pre-UIGEA gambling activities.