Case: 25-7504, 01/16/2026, DktEntry: 38.1, Page 13 of 47
by any person “in the business of betting or wagering” to transmit cer- tain information—including “bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest,” orders of payment “as a result of [any such] bets or wagers,” or “information in assisting in the placing of bets or wagers”—across state lines. Id. §1084(a); see, e.g. , United States v. Lyons , 740 F.3d 702, 716 (1st Cir. 2014) (holding that the internet is a “wire communication facil- ity”). As the House Report accompanying the Wire Act explained, the statute was intended to “assist the various States and the District of Columbia in the enforcement of their laws pertaining to gambling, book making, and like offenses.” H.R. Rep. No. 87-967, at 1-2 (1961); see G. Robert Blakely & Harold A. Kurland, Development of the Federal Law of Gambling , 63 Cornell L. Rev. 923, 965-967 (1978). The act’s safe-harbor provision exempts otherwise-covered communications if “(1) betting is legal in both the place of origin and the destination of the transmission; and (2) the transmission is limited to mere information that assists in the placing of bets, as opposed to including the bets themselves.” United States v. Cohen , 260 F.3d 68, 73-75 (2d Cir. 2001) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 1084(b)). Other federal gambling laws adopted around the time of the Wire
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