Gambling Site in Seattle Ruled Illegal
A three year dispute over a peer-to-peer betting website in Seattle, USA, finally came to an end when the Supreme Court in Washington ruled the service to be illegal. The gambling in USA betting website in question here is Betcha.com which was founded by Nicholas Jenkins. The online betting site was shut down back in the year 2007 for charges of violating the anti-gambling laws of the state.
The feature of the website that brought upon this ruling is that website charges a fee from customers for making bets, but it doesn’t require the losers to pay off their bets.
However what was interesting to note was that Tom Chambers, Supreme Court Judge of Washington State, stated in the court ruling that this practice was against the law for this very reason. The ruling stated that bookmaking meant charging a fee in order to gain the opportunity to place a bet. In this case the term bet does not require that the bet be upheld or the betting loses be paid.
But according to Nicholas the court never asked one important question which was whether or not players were actually betting actually betting at the site. Nicholas further justified that the site took bets on very out of the ordinary questions like would it be a full moon on a certain night.
The betting site let customers set their own odds and terms on their bets and players were allowed to refuse to pay up within 72 hours of making their bet.
However the downside of not paying up was that the player would lower his or her honor rating on the website and so other players would not want to do business with players with a low honor rating at the site. The system was something like eBay’s honor system.