ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the interrelationships between online gambling and crime. It also examines illegal online gambling, cyberextortion, betting related match fixing, and money laundering and gambling related crime. By the turn of the twentieth century most US states had outlawed gambling, driving it underground and into the hands of organised crime syndicates. Until the mid-1970s, Nevada was the only US state that permitted casinos, yet even here organised crime groups were the first to establish legal gambling operations when Assembly Bill 98 was passed in 1931. In the UK and Canada, opinion polls indicate that a belief that gambling is associated with criminal activity is held by a good proportion of society. An understanding of the ways in which online gamblers experience, interpret and interact with the online gambling environment was derived from a virtual ethnography.
