Quoted

Jul 13, 2018

Jim Trusty Quoted in Gambling Compliance on the Wire Act’s Impact on Sports Betting

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to lift a ban on sports betting, the federal government is unlikely to enforce the Wire Act aggressively to crack down on states which choose to legalize and regulate wagers on games, a former U.S. Department of Justice official said on Thursday.

“I would say that the bottom line is it’s going to be a pretty anemic appetite (to prosecute states under the Wire Act),” said James Trusty, who was chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime and gangs section for about seven years beginning in 2011 and recently joined the Ifrah law firm in Washington, D.C. Speaking during a webinar sponsored by the Cozen O’Connor law firm in Philadelphia, Trusty said all gambling cases came through his section at the Justice Department and there were only “a handful.”

“It was very rare to see federal gambling prosecutions,” Trusty said.

Recent efforts by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to make their sports-betting regulations comply with the Wire Act make federal prosecution “even less attractive,” Trusty said.

“They certainly help deflate the interest of a prosecutor in going forward,” Trusty said.

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