One of the burning questions has been whether the action taken against BetonSports and its people is company-specific (ie aimed at nailing a high profile company that has allegedly questionable origins and a sports telephone betting record) or is the start of a wider persecution of industry activities in the ?

Certainly the hardass initial statements of Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway gave the impression that there was more to come. She said: "Illegal commercial gambling across state and international borders is a crime. Misuse of the Internet to violate the law can ultimately only serve to harm legitimate businesses. This indictment is but one step in a series of actions designed to punish and seize the profits of individuals who disregard federal and state laws."

However, later statements by DoJ spokesfolks had a milder ring.  Jackie Lesch said the indictment against BetonSports was consistent with previous policy, and emphasised that the DoJ did not intend to go after all US-facing operators.  She added that "Under three federal statutes online gambling is illegal, both sports betting and casino games."

Asked why the DoJ had picked on BetonSports rather than, say, PartyGaming, she said: "We weigh up the evidence and pick the cases that we think will have the greatest deterrent effect."

Mitch Garber,  CEO of Party Gaming countered: "I would ask the DoJ that if online gambling is illegal, why are there three Bills waiting to go to the Senate trying to make online gambling illegal?"

Jon Tarasewicz, a leisure analyst at Deutsche Bank’s City arm, seemed to agree with Garber, saying that the action may be aimed specifically at the Kaplans and their associates. The family had run physical gambling operations before going offshore and BetOnSports made greater use than rivals of telephone betting, in contravention of the Wire Act in .

Tarasewicz said: “If this is not driven by trying to get at the founders and is genuinely the start of an industry clampdown, the timing seems odd, given that politicians have passed legislation through Congress whose whole point is that existing legislation is not robust enough to prosecute anyone.”

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, arch-enemy of online gaming in the House of Representatives seemed to admit that the question of illegality was not as cut and dried as Department of Justice spokesmen believe it to be.  Praising the actions of the DoJ, he said: "We join with them in trying to make it clear that the law covers all forms of gambling.  It is quite clear that the Wire Act covers sports betting, [but] the Wire Act because it was written in 1961 is not at all clear as to whether it covers other forms of gambling."

The existing law does not clearly ban such things as a virtual roulette wheel, poker and other kinds of online gaming, Goodlatte said, also drawing attention to the fact that executives with other overseas gambling companies should take note of the prosecution.

Another DoJ spokesman, Brian Sierra said: "The view of the Department of Justice is and has been that Internet gambling is illegal," According to Sierra, the new laws and Congress' interest in online gambling have nothing to do with the latest round of charges lodged by the Department of Justice. "We're not trying to send a grand scale message here," he said. "We've been saying it for years: Internet gambling is illegal."

Sierra’s comment to Dow Jones Newswires earlier in the week downplayed suggestions the indictment may trigger a clampdown on the online gaming sector. "I wouldn't read too much into one indictment. It is obviously a fairly significant case on its own with a number of defendants," he said.

Sierra says the department's position is and has always been that anyone either in or outside of the who operates illegal online gambling operations to take bets from residents is committing a crime. Period.

gaming lawyer Hilary Stewart-Jones believes that much of the Department of Justice’s tactics are based on scaring the industry into compliance. 

“I don’t think it’s going to be part of a flat-out campaign to prosecute everyone associated with online gambling," she told OCN. "I don’t think they [US Department of Justice] have the resources or the appetite to do that… I would imagine it is much more about putting a marker in the sand and being seen to be taking action. The Department of Justice stance throughout all of this has been to try and control by fear as a deterrent, rather than pushing through clear legislation for example, or pushing through to test cases and prosecutions, so the fear factor has featured largely in deterring companies from going all out to take bets from the .”

Several sector observers and analysts in London opined Tuesday that investors were overreacting by selling off online gambling holdings: “The indictment seems to be very BetOnSports-specific, yet the market seems to be treating all online gaming companies in the same manner,” said Wayne Brown, an analyst with Altium Securities in London.

Martin Owens, a  attorney who specializes in online and interactive gaming law, says "The arrest of David Carruthers represents a giant step backward in American gaming policy. It serves only to daunt and intimidate precisely that segment of the industry, which is attempting to bring online gambling into a harmonious and useful relationship with the licensed gaming regimes already in place. Grabbing Carruthers does nothing at all against the true pirates of the industry - to the contrary, it reinforces their position."

"There is a genuine controversy here, based on the fact that Internet gambling is legal under the laws of at least 70 countries at the same time that the purports to ban it," comments Owens. "I say purports because that is not a clear law or decision. At the time of this writing, there is as yet no federal law on the books unequivocally banning i-Gambling, and no federal court decision to that effect. The issue of whether or not American state or federal jurisdiction is invoked simply by the act of an American contacting an offshore gambling site has not even been intelligently addressed, never mind decided".
 
Mark Grossman, technology lawyer and the author of the "TechLaw" column, which has appeared as a weekly feature in the Miami Herald adds to this sentiment:

"I don't think this [arrest] spells doom and gloom for the industry. This has always been an industry where those in the business understood the legal risks inherent in their operation. For years now, the government has been aggressive in the public positions they have taken about the legality of online gaming operations. The fact is that the laws are ambiguous and Congress, after years of trying to pass news laws that address the ambiguities, has not been able get anything approved by both houses of Congress. So does the latest arrest spell the end of the industry? Of course not. However, I suppose that there will be fewer layovers in Dallas by executives involved in an online gaming business."

Jim Halpert, partner at the DLA Pipe law firm in Washington, DC, said: "The record of enforcement in this area is one of periodic high-profile enforcement actions, designed to deter what the Department of Justice views as ongoing systematic violations of law."

legal expert Anthony Cabot said that over the past decade, federal officials have prosecuted many operators of online sports books with ownership or operations because federal law prohibits using phone wires to place those bets.

In a celebrated case from 2000, prosecutors won a conviction against Jay Cohen, a citizen who ran an operation in Antigua that took sports bets from Americans over the Internet. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison. But the wire law doesn't cover other types of casino betting, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled. That has left some doubt about whether prosecutors can shut down poker and other casino games that target American players, Cabot said.

"The Justice Department has said [all] Internet gambling is prohibited, but most legal experts would say they are wrong, that this only applies to sports betting," opines Joseph Kelly, a legal scholar at the State University of New York  at Buffalo, who has consulted for the government of Antigua and others on US law.

Kelly said it was an unusual coincidence that the indictment - which was handed down in June but only unsealed this week - came in such close contiguity to the House of Representatives passing a new bill banning some, but not all forms of Web gambling in the USA.

"Why would Congress try to make something illegal if it is already illegal?" he asks.

The Times says that will refuse to extradite suspects for breaking US laws against internet gambling. Extradition is an option only if conduct is illegal in both the and .