The moral crusade continues:

David Carruthers, chief executive of online gaming group BETonSPORTS, has been detained by U.S. authorities while changing planes, the company said on Monday, sending the shares down more than 20 percent.

“While changing flights in the United States en route from the UK to Costa Rica, David Carruthers, chief executive of BETonSPORTS Plc was detained by U.S. federal authorities,” the company said in a statement.

In an email, Ed Brayton notes that Carruthers, “has been outspoken in his opposition to attempts to ban online gaming in the US. He recently had a written debate with Rep. Leach in the Wall Street Journal, and a couple years ago his company took out ads and billboards urging people to write their legislators about previous legislation similar to Goodlatte’s.”

A commenter at Brayton’s site frames this correctly:

So let me get this straight: The guy is a UK citizen, runs a UK-based company with a UK-based website, and he gets arrested in America because Americans are gambling on his website?

Yep. Well. Sort of. He was arrested because a handful of morally grandstanding American politicians want to score cheap political points.

Here’s hoping the U.K. launches a holy hell of a trade dispute. Not just over this incident, but over the online gambling issue in general.

Now would be a good time to join the Poker Players Alliance. Even if you don’t play poker. These guys (along with a certain think tank) are really the only ones fighting the good fight on this issue.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 6:21 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.