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UK Law Could Increase Penalty For Gambling Cheats

Maximum Prison Sentence Would Increase From Two To 10 Years

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A new proposal in the United Kingdom calls for an increase in the penalty for being caught and convicted of cheating at gambling. The full text can be found here.

Under the proposed change, the maximum possible jail sentence would go up from two years to 10.

Sporting events (explicitly) and online poker (implicitly) would fall under the scope of the amendment to the law. The bill in question is the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill.

The sponsor is former sports minister Lord Moynihan.

The move comes not long after the state of Nevada, the top gaming authority in the United States, recently announced that it was partnering up with the Olympics to help combat cheating in the upcoming games in Sochi, Russia.

Other places, like Australia, have potential decade-long prison sentences for match-fixing.

Some jurisdictions think sports betting can be better controlled when legal, rather than letting it exist as a black market. That’s the argument New Jersey has taken in its quest to be able to allow its casinos the opportunity to take action on NCAA games, for example.