Barney Frank's Legislation Coming Next Week

Barney Frank is a busy guy, and he looks to get even busier.

As Chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Frank is right in the middle of the financial crisis, so he can be forgiven for the repeated delays in his long-promised bill to overturn the much-hated and useless UIGEA.

But the delay may finally be coming to an and.

Frank was speaking today at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit and when asked about his planned bill he said, "We'll be introducing it next week and I plan to move on it."

Things are about to get interesting.

With the economy in tatters and the financial industry being particularly hard-hit, it would seem to make sense to repeal a law that handcuffs financial institutions with ridiculous and unclear enforcement duties.

Furthermore, overturning this bill would please America's allies, such as the UK, who has been complaining about how the UIGEA is contradictory to WTO regulations.

So, this should be a slam-dunk, right?

Not so fast.

As far as I can tell, Frank's planned legislation sounds like a simple overturning of the UIGEA, and does not include any plans... [More]

He's baaack

No sooner did Bodog get their domain back, than Calvin Ayre reared his head up out of retirement for an interview.

About a year ago, Ayre retired from Bodog after supposedly handing over the company to the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG) in some sort of licensing deal.

At the time, I figured it wasn't the last we had seen of Mr. Ayre, and while I was correct, I must admit that he held himself out of the news for a lot longer than I thought was possible for somebody with his ego.

But it sounds like Ayre is warming up for a comeback. In that way, he's kinda sounding like Pat Riley... when things go sour, he drops out of sight; but when things start to turn around he'll pop right back up as if he never left.

Anyway, I must admit that I got some guilty pleasure from reading the interview. It offers some delicious bits of revisionist history.

For instance, I am loving the twist that Ayre and MMGG is putting on the deal to get back the bodog.com domain... Something to do with shell companies being already out of business in 2006.

Yeah, right. And that's why it took two years to get the domain back, and when you did it was through a licensing deal.... [More]

Zombie Attack! Bodog.com flickers back to life

Once again, I leave the office for a few days, and therefore the industry lights up with interesting, if not overly important, news.

It looks like the bodog.com domain is once again in the possession of Bodog, er, the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG).

Currently, it is still redirecting to their bodoglife.com domain, but I imagine that will be changing shortly.

The domain has been in dispute now for at least two years, after Bodog failed to respond to a patent lawsuit and had the domain seized as part of the default judgement in favor of the patent-trolling plaintiff, First Technology LLC.

As of yet, MMGG is not releasing how much it cost to get the domain back, but a couple of stories (here and here) describe the deal as a "domain licensing agreement", which indicates to me that MMGG still does not own or control the domain, but rather is leasing it from First Technology.

Even this seems kind of murky to me. If First Technology is an American company, then are they even allowed to license the domain to a gambling company? Either way, I don't care.

But this news is definitely good for Bodog, which has managed to stay afloat for the last year despite a flood of negative publicity and the ... [More]

Big News... PartyGaming Settles with DOJ

This just in from the "Let's Make a Deal Department", the newswires are buzzing with the story that PartyGaming PLC has reached a non-prosecution agreement with the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

The amount of the bribe fee? Only $105 million. To be paid in installments up until 2012.

Now, you might ask yourself, "Did he just say only $105 million? There's nothing only about $105 million."

You may be right, but we also have to put this in perspective.

As the Wall Street Journal notes: "The sum is broadly in line with market expectations."

That being said, only last December, one of Party's founders, Anurag Dikshit, agreed to pay $300 million to avoid prosecution.

So... one of the founders personally has to pay almost three times what the company has to pay? That doesn't seem right.

It appears Mr. Dikshit forgot the wisdom of Wade Boggs... never swing at the first pitch.

A Wider Perspective

I can't get over how fast things are suddenly moving in this industry.

Just last week, the US Attorney Catherine Hanaway caved  ... [More]

Breaking News: BetOnSports CEO Pleads Guilty

I don't know if this is an April Fools joke or not, but today former BetOnSports CEO, David Carruthers, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering conspiracy charges.

This news is definitely a surprise. I'm still digesting the information right now.

This timing is confusing... it's almost as if our backwards friend, U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, is using this as some sort of odd response to the European Commission's report this week, stating that America's stance against online gambling was contradicting WTO agreements.

Either way, as the news indicates, it looks like Carruthers agreed to a bargain that will see the prosecution recommend a 33-month sentence.

Seeing as he has been in jail since the summer of 2006, that sentence sounds an awful lot like "time served" to me, and is definitely a far cry from the "20 years in prison and/or fines up to $250,000" which Hanaway claims in ... [More]