Elie Posts Former US Attorney’s Legal Opinion on Poker, Reasons Unknown

Nov 05, 2012
Elie Posts Former US Attorney’s Legal Opinion on Poker, Reasons Unknown
Although it's not yet clear why, one of Black Friday cash processing defendants Chad Elie this week posted a new, and apparently changed view from former Missouri US Attorney Catherine Hanaway on online poker. Hanaway was first noticed back in 2006, when the first really big U.S. bust of an online gambling firm took place and she was the one leading the government prosecution team and turned out to play a big role in the demise of BetOnSports and the detention of its CEO, David Carruthers. The Hanaway letter posted by Elie on his Twitter account, features her professional opinion on the Wire Act and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, expressed before the US Department of Justice published its changed stand on the Wire Act. It has been noted in one of the media which reported on the Elie post that "The Hanaway letter seems to support the notion that processing transactions related to online poker does not violate the Wire Act or the UIGEA. This is a document a bank would need to protect themselves against liability in case the transactions turned out to be problematic." The letter was written in July 2010, when Hanaway was reportedly employed by a law firm led by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. It served to give a legal opinion to SunFirst, a bank that subsequently appeared in the e-processing prosecutions.
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