Whether you stopped payment on a check, bounced a check, closed your checking account, did a charge-back on your credit card…it doesn’t matter.  Whatever you did to stop the transfer of your money to the online gambling company which led to the debt collection agency contacting you, doesn’t matter.

The legality of online gambling and online poker was somewhat of a grey area until the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was passed in late 2006.  The bill specifically made the transfer of money from a financial institution to an online gambling company illegal, and was generally thought to have made online gambling illegal in the United States, which is why Party Poker and NeTeller, the original PayPal of online gambling, stopped taking US bets and facilitating US transfers of money.  These companies, which at the time were the biggest in the industry, also were public companies listed in the United Kingdom which meant their owners, their shareholders and board members, were public information, which is why they pulled out of the United States.  This led to the emergence of sites like Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker, BoDog, Ultimate Bet, and Absolute Poker, all private, offshore companies.  These companies began to thrive, yet all the while in violation of US law.  It wasn’t until this year, 2011, that the US Justice Department decided to enforce the UIGEA and seize and shutdown some of these sites.