If online poker became illegal, could the feds do THIS???

Regardless of whether the federal wire law can be applied, the law in many states could be applied more directly to find that on-line gambling is illegal in their jurisdiction. Add in some federal-state coordination to enforce these laws, and the issue of the original post could still be a problem.

It would take a concerted federal effort to find that on-line gambling is illegal and enforce it against individual users. I was merely trying to identify some factors that would seem to make this more unlikely than it would have been 5-6 years ago.

Also, it is not so simple as to whether a law in a particular state could be applied more directly to find that on-line gambling is illegal. Enforcement is made much more difficult by the inter-state/international nature of the internet and thus the federal/state lines become very blurry and complicated.