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[adanthar]

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adanthar,

The whole point of this company's plan isn't to shield a player from criminal liability, but rather a publicly held corporation. The want to try to provide a way for party et al to again allow american players on their site, without exposing such sites to legal liabilities vis a vis the US gov't. Of course it would apply (if it works and flies and is trustworthy) to privately held companies as well.

This is all apart from the issue of stock solicitation mentioned earlier.

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Let me very quickly point out the following problems with this (also adding that it's been thought of before, hundreds of times):

-For a site to do business with the corp, it has to know that the corp is reliable and not subject to US pressure of its own accord (and/or won't run away with eight digits of moneys)
-For the corp to survive, it has to be immune from US law of any kind, ie based off foreign soil with none of the directors interested in visiting the US
-Except...the list of shareholders in your corporation, which is clearly circumventing (let's say) Washington state law, is subject to a subpoena from any Washington state district attorney
-If the corp refuses to comply, hello potential asset seizure (at this point, getting your "paychecks" onto US soil will become a very interesting process)

This isn't even close to an exhaustive list. Bottom line, you can't circumvent US law when all your "shareholders" (actually, not even that, and this opens up ten new cans of worms in terms of their liability in US courts) are US residents and a good chunk of them are consciously committing felonies with your approval. If that is your business model you are not long for this world.

edit: You can continue to believe in this or not, it's your call. Let me just say that I was 100% right about Pokershare (in large part for the exact same reasons) and there's understandably a whole lot of wishful thinking going on right now. Suffice to say that I am open to large prop bets on any corporation even getting to the stage where a site decides to do business with them, let alone successfully maintaining it for a year or more.

[BluffTHIS!]

adanthar,

I wasn't saying that their plan is a good one and/or likely to work, and doubt it is, for many of the reasons you gave, plus the additional one of how secure they are for their "investors". I was only saying that your previous post addressed this issue from the perspective of the players, when this isn't really a concern of most players (my state isn't one of those that ban online gambling but I wouldn't give a [censored] if they did unless I put the probability of their catching me to be high).

[adanthar]

Okay, but if you're going to actively do this and have your name out there as a shareholder, the probability of them catching you goes way up. It'd be like putting a giant "I pirate MP3's; here's my name, address and hard drive contents" billboard right by RIAA headquarters, except with jail.

If you're in a legal area, who cares...if you're going to go for trusting your money to people likely to run away with it, you may as well just run Party through a proxy and foreign PO Box in the first place.

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, but if you're going to actively do this and have your name out there as a shareholder, the probability of them catching you goes way up. It'd be like putting a giant "I pirate MP3's; here's my name, address and hard drive contents" billboard right by RIAA headquarters, except with jail.

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How are the names of stockholders in a non-publicly traded corporation going to be matters of public record? Again I'm not defending this concept as a good one.



[ QUOTE ]
If you're in a legal area, who cares...if you're going to go for trusting your money to people likely to run away with it, you may as well just run Party through a proxy and foreign PO Box in the first place.

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That also requires travel to another country to set up a bank account (know your customer rules), and most players aren't going to do that. They clearly are trying to offer a solution to a large number of players, and not just the most motivated/technically aware, who could find a way on their own.

[adanthar]

Like I said, if a DA in Wash. subpoenas the corp for those names, the alternatives are 1)to give them up or 2)to give up any pretense that you can ever pay people.

[SlapPappy]

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Like I said, if a DA in Wash. subpoenas the corp for those names, the alternatives are 1)to give them up or 2)to give up any pretense that you can ever pay people.

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They can't subpoena the corporation it is based in Costa Rica.

[adanthar]

Yes they can. As long as the corp has a substantial business presence (I may be phrasing the test wrong b/c it's been years since I cared, but it passes regardless) in State X it can be subpoenad in State X. Every state has different laws as to exactly how that works (usually, you serve a state official, who is considered a representative by proxy), but the short version is that it does.

"But wait, how do they know the corporation has a substantial business presence if they don't have the shareholder list?"

Simple - by law (I'm 99.9% sure this applies in every state), any foreign corporation must register in any state where it does have a presence in order to be considered a corporation at all. Employees (snicker) certainly count as being a 'presence'.

"But nobody's going to do that!"

Then it's not counted as a corporation in Washington, meaning that the entire activity is illegal from top to bottom and anyone who receives checks from it is certain to be very closely scrutinized.

We can keep going if you'd like...but the mere fact that your corporation is registered in Costa Rica does not mean that everyone "working for it" in the US is also transported off into magical US-proof fantasyland.