Playboy plans non-U.S. Net poker site
By Mike Hughlett
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Playboy Enterprises said yesterday it will jump into the burgeoning online poker business — though not in the United States.
That's not surprising given that the U.S. Justice Department's stance that Internet-based gambling is illegal.
To prove its point, the agency sought an indictment against the leader of one of the world's biggest online betting companies, BetOnSports.com. David Carruthers, chief executive of the publicly traded BetOnSports, was arrested and pleaded guilty yesterday in a federal court in St. Louis to racketeering charges.
The U.S. is the world's largest Web betting market, but the substantial industry that has grown up to serve it is largely based in the United Kingdom.
U.S. companies haven't chanced crossing the Justice Department, even though the legality or illegality of Web-based gambling here is far from clear, experts say. While the government says the law applies to Web gambling, federal judges haven't always agreed.
Playboy said it will launch a poker site as early as the fourth quarter of 2006.
The site will be run by Oceania Caribe Licensing, a firm in the Netherlands Antilles that has licensed Playboy's brand, according to CryptoLogic Inc., a maker of Internet gambling software.
Toronto-based CryptoLogic is developing Playboy's poker site, and another betting-related site that Playboy announced in May.
Neither site will allow bets from the U.S. Playboy is taking "all precautions possible" to ensure that ban, said Linda Marsicano, a Playboy spokeswoman.
Those precautions include:
