US: IMEGA fights anti-online gambling UIGEA

This Act prevents American-based credit card companies and banks from processing payments to online gambling businesses with violators subject to civil and criminal penalties including imprisonment.

This latest request was filed by Jacqueline Coleman Snead, Trial Attorney in the Washington, DC, office of the US Department of Justice's Civil Division, just days before the initial deadline was due to pass.

The original case was filed on June 5 with a response to IMEGA's complaint due by August 17 but this latest motion, granted by the Honourable Mary L Cooper, means that the co-defendants now have until September 4 to fully reply to the charges made against them.

IMEGA alleges that UIGEA infringes American's basic Constitutional rights and sets a dangerous precedent for i-commerce by criminalizing the transmission of money if the end result is illegal in some unspecified place.

’The purpose of UIGEA is to prevent Americans from engaging in their fundamental rights to conduct their lives in the manner they wish to live it, to be free from the Government imposing public morality in the privacy of one’s home,” said Eric Bernstein, attorney for IMEGA.