The Kansas City Star has recently published an article titled "Oops, Did Congress accidentally legalize cyber gambling?"  in where the newspaper notes that the federal regulations enforcing the UIGEA and trying to ban online gambling might have exactly the opposite effect and that instead of curbing online gambling activities in the U.S, the rules may create legal voids that would be beneficial for the online gaming industry.

In the article published a few days ago, the Kansas City Star notes that the new enforcement rules do not clarify which transactions are "legal" as opposed to "illegal", besides, the Treasury Department has instructed that banks are not required to check payments related with online gambling activities, so fundamentally, the regulations only apply to deposits. Under rules approved by the Treasury Department, the term "restricted transaction" would not limit funds going to the gamblers, and would only include funds paid to Internet gambling business and only if the money is going from a bank to a gambling business account.

Also, the regulations state that there are no procedures to identify and block Western Union and MoneyGram, transactions, and it’s not "an efficient tool for a gambling business on a scale that it would be useful due to their lack of brad public accessibility". The regulations also state that there is no way to code ACH transactions, and basically it's up to the NACHA to do their due diligence when a new ACH customer is signed up.

And since these rules won’t become effective until December 2009, there is still plenty of time to apply modifications such as the bills introduced by Congressman Barney Frank and The Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, which is currently trying to amend the UIGEA enforcement in the US courts.