Things can get really scary in the US these days if you’re in any way inclined to try your hand at online bingo entrepreneurship, if events in Seattle are anything to go by.

Betcha.com is not an online bingo hall or an operator of bingo online, but what happened to its owner is pretty scary story for any online gambling businessman contemplating the US market.  Nick Jenkins is a respectable lawyer in the Seattle area who hit upon the idea of setting up a peer-to-peer betting website that facilitated online bets.  A month later he was in jail.

Seems Washington State gambling officials took exception to the operation and decided to crack down hard (midnight armed raids with lots of shouting policemen etc.).  While Jenkins’ story has little to do with online bingo, what I find interesting about his predicament is that he supposedly made a mere 75 cents on one US$35 bet in order to bring down upon him the full wrath of Washington officialdom.

It’s too complicated in this short space to go into the legal details as to why Jenkins was jailed for making 75 cents.  75 cents!  It’s the principle I hear you say?  I guess that’s what they used to say when they hung people for a loaf of bread in the old days.

Written by John Witherspoon - Play bingo online at http://bingostreet.com/ and read bingo news.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 2:19 am and is filed under Online Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.