Is Facebook debater part of Adelson anti-online gambling drive?
News on 18 Jan 2014
News on 18 Jan 2014
Poker Players Alliance vice president Rich Muny recently acquitted himself rather well in a Facebook exchange with the reportedly Republican political consultant and strategist Cheri Jacobson.
Jacobson, leaning heavily on two FBI letters to Congress that the Adelson anti-online gambling campaign has frequently trotted out to back their claims that online gambling is dangerous and may be used to launder money, had earlier launched into a Twitter and Facebook diatribe on the issue, accusing reputable journalists of failing to air the letters (dated 2009 and September 2013), and demanding that online gambling sites be compelled to display them.
Her rightist tendencies, and her reliance on letters that are clearly a central pillar in Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG) campaign against the continued legalisation of online gambling, prompted speculation that she was on the Adelson campaign payroll, a suggestion she vehemently denied.
In an at times heated debate with Jacobson, the PPA’s Muny pointed out that the FBI’s opinion embraced land casinos as well as online gambling companies and even “well regulated” financial institutions, and that the content of the letter was laced with speculation rather than hard facts substantiating the sweeping claims of the potential for money laundering.
Muny also critically examined the work of one of the CSIG technical pundits quoted by Jacobson, Jim Thackston, who had professed to explain how money laundering through online poker sites is possible.
The PPA exec noted that Thackston’s “proof” is based on how relatively easy it would be to indulge in collusion and chip-dumping on Yahoo free-play sites, which Muny pointed out was possibly not the fairest or most accurate comparison with the more advanced and sophisticated systems used by well-established and experienced online poker company managements.
Developing his argument, Muny suggested that Thackston and Jacobson demonstrate the validity of their claims by practically exercising them on any proper online poker site, an invitation which was rejected on the rather tenuous grounds that it was inciting the duo to commit a crime.
