Is BookMaker.eu Legal in the US? Statutes, Enforcement and the Real Risk

No federal law makes it a crime to place a bet at BookMaker.eu, and we could find one prosecution of an individual bettor for offshore sports betting in the last 25 years, a North Dakota plea in 2003 that ended in a $500 fee. Four states do have statutes that reach the bettor, Washington as a felony, and two state regulators have sent BookMaker cease and desist letters since February 2025. The real exposure is not arrest. It is that nobody regulates the site, so nobody can make it pay you.

This page is general information, not legal advice. Statutes are quoted from the primary text and enforcement history is from public records and named reports. If your situation matters, ask a lawyer licensed in your state. Sportsbooks.ag may earn a commission from some links on this page; see our affiliate disclaimer and editorial policy.

“Is it legal” is three questions wearing one coat. What does the statute text say? What enforcement has actually happened? What is the practical risk? Most pages on this subject answer the first, guess at the second and ignore the third. Our shorter answer for the whole market is at is it illegal to use offshore sportsbooks; this page is the BookMaker specific version with the statutes quoted. We loaded the statutes, the court opinions and the regulator letters, and we separate all three below.

BookMaker’s own terms and the regulator letters

BookMaker’s restricted regions page lists four US states it will not serve: “Kentucky State (US) | New Jersey State (US) | Ohio State (US) | Tennessee State (US)”. Around 45 countries are also excluded, including the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and Brazil. The page adds that “any attempt to circumvent these or any policies may result in account closure and the forfeiture of funds.” Being accepted from a state does not mean betting there is legal; it means BookMaker has not chosen to block it. Every offshore sportsbook we review takes the same position.

The help centre also states that “BookMaker is fully licensed by the Government of Costa Rica to accept wagers over the Internet.” As the Costa Rica section explains, no such licence exists. The terms name no legal entity, no regulator and no governing law.

Two state regulators have written to the operator. The Illinois Gaming Board sent a cease and desist letter to BookMaker.eu in San José, Costa Rica on 11 February 2025, citing the Sports Wagering Act and the state’s gambling statute and stating that “Book Maker’s activity constitutes illegal gambling in violation of Illinois law.” It was one of thirteen letters sent to offshore operators that day and it says nothing about bettors. Maryland Lottery and Gaming published its own BookMaker.eu cease and desist notice in October 2025. Michigan’s gaming board has sent 57 such letters in two batches since December 2025, none naming BookMaker. The letters have no visible effect on the sites, which continue to accept residents of all three states.

Federal law: Wire Act, UIGEA and the IGBA

Three federal statutes get cited on this subject. None of them, on its text, reaches a person who places a bet.

The Wire Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1084. The operative clause begins “Whoever being engaged in the business of betting or wagering knowingly uses a wire communication facility for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers.” The penalty is a fine or up to two years. The phrase that matters is “engaged in the business of.” In United States v. Baborian, 528 F. Supp. 324 (D.R.I. 1981), the court held that § 1084 “does not sweep within its prohibition a mere bettor,” and the Congressional Research Service’s standing report on the Act says it “apparently cannot be used to prosecute simple bettors.” The 2011 and 2018 Justice Department opinions and the First Circuit’s 2021 decision in New Hampshire Lottery Commission v. Rosen were a fight about whether the Act covers non sports gambling. Sports betting was inside it under every reading, and none of that litigation concerned bettors.

UIGEA, 31 U.S.C. §§ 5361 to 5367. Section 5363 says “No person engaged in the business of betting or wagering may knowingly accept” credit, electronic funds transfers, checks or similar payments “in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling.” The criminal penalty in § 5366 applies only to violations of § 5363, meaning the operator accepting the payment. UIGEA creates no offence for the bettor and, by § 5362(10), only bites where the bet is already unlawful under some other federal or state law. What UIGEA did do was create Regulation GG, 12 CFR Part 233, which requires banks and card networks to maintain policies “reasonably designed to identify and block” restricted transactions, typically by merchant category code. That is why card deposits at offshore books get declined, and why most bettors end up at a Bitcoin sportsbook cashier.

The Illegal Gambling Business Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1955. Covers whoever “conducts, finances, manages, supervises, directs, or owns all or part of an illegal gambling business.” Five or more people, thirty days or $2,000 in a day, in violation of state law. The CRS report notes it excludes “participation as a mere bettor.”

Enforcement matches the text. The 1998 Southern District of New York offshore sportsbook case charged fourteen operators and managers and no customers. In 2025 the Justice Department sentenced Ippei Mizuhara to 57 months for bank fraud and a false tax return arising from bets with an illegal bookmaker; the charges were about the money he took, not the bets he placed. The bookmaker in that case was charged for running the business. We found no federal prosecution of an individual for the act of betting offshore.

State law: where the bettor is the offender

State statutes are where a bettor can be an offender on the text, and the text varies enormously. Here are the four we could confirm, with the sections quoted, and two that get cited but do not say what people claim.

Now the enforcement column, which is nearly empty. The only documented prosecution of an individual for online sports betting we could find anywhere in the United States is Jeffrey Trauman, who pleaded guilty in Fargo, North Dakota in 2003 to betting online between June 2001 and April 2003, and received a $500 fee with a deferred sentence. The gambling law update that reported it noted that before that case no state had acted “against the casual gambler,” and we found nothing since. Washington, the one felony state, published a pamphlet after its 2006 felony upgrade saying players found in seized operator records “would likely” receive a warning letter and that “there is not an active campaign against regular players.” The one Washington resident who challenged the ban in court, in Rousso v. State (2010), lost the challenge and was never prosecuted. We found no player prosecutions in Illinois, Connecticut or Tennessee. That is a negative search result, not proof that none exist.

Two of the four bettor offence states, Illinois and Tennessee, also have legal regulated online sportsbooks. BookMaker’s welcome bonus is only available to US accounts, which tells you how the operator sees that map. That is not a coincidence. The statutes that criminalise the bettor are being kept on the books as a fence around the licensed market rather than as something prosecutors use.

Where sports betting is legal in 2026

The state you are in determines whether there is a licensed alternative and whether a statute reaches you at all. As of September 2026, per Legal Sports Report and CBS Sports, online sports betting is live in 31 states plus the District of Columbia. Missouri launched on 1 December 2025. Wisconsin signed a tribal online model into law in April 2026 but has not launched. Seven states allow retail betting only, and eleven have no legal sports betting of any kind.

Sources disagree on Florida, which some lists count as online because Hard Rock operates statewide under the Seminole compact and others exclude because there is no open licensing. We count it. Re check your state before relying on this table; the map changed twice in the twelve months before this page was written.

What a Costa Rica registration means

BookMaker says it is licensed by the Government of Costa Rica. Costa Rica has no online gambling licence. Its Law No. 9050 of 2012 imposes a tax on “empresas dedicadas a la recepción y el procesamiento de datos que generan apuestas electrónicas,” companies that receive and process data generating electronic bets, set by headcount at 57, 85 or 113 base salaries a year, and leaves operating permits to municipalities. It creates no gambling regulator, no consumer protection and no dispute mechanism. Operators there hold what is usually called a data processing licence, which is a municipal business permit.

For a player dispute this means the only route is the one BookMaker’s own terms describe: live chat, within 15 calendar days, with management’s decision final. There is no authority in Costa Rica that hears complaints about online betting and no authority in the United States that has jurisdiction over the operator. Bookmakers Review’s August 2026 licence risk report describes BookMaker’s status as a business registration rather than a gaming licence and rates the risk as medium. Our BookMaker review scores trust and transparency at 7.0 partly for this reason, and the weighting is explained in how we rate sportsbooks.

Taxes on offshore winnings

The IRS position is not complicated. Topic 419 states that “gambling winnings are fully taxable and you must report the income on your tax return,” on Form 1040 via Schedule 1, whether or not you receive a Form W-2G. A W-2G is filed by the payer when winnings reach the reporting threshold, $2,000 for 2026 and at least 300 times the wager. BookMaker’s terms say it does not report account information to any government agency, which is consistent with no W-2G ever being issued. That does not change what you owe. It changes who is tracking it, which is you.

Losses can be deducted only if you itemise on Schedule A, and only up to the amount of your winnings. For tax years beginning after 31 December 2025, 26 U.S.C. § 165(d) as amended by Public Law 119-21 limits that deduction to “90 percent of the amount of such losses.” A bettor who wins $50,000 and loses $50,000 in 2026 has $5,000 of taxable income from gambling. In September 2026 the House Ways and Means Committee voted 38 to 5 to restore the full deduction, but as of this page that is a committee vote on a bill, not law, and a floor vote is not expected before the November midterms.

The practical risks

Set the criminal question aside, because the record says it is close to theoretical everywhere except Washington on paper. The risks that actually cost people money are these.

Nobody can make BookMaker pay you. The terms make live chat the only dispute route and management’s decision final. In 2026 at least four bettors on two betting forums reported accounts locked at the verification step with balances from $3,000 to $30,000, none answered by the operator in public. None of them had anywhere to appeal. The review covers the pattern, and the payouts page shows what a forced wire costs.

Your bank may block the deposit or the payout. Regulation GG requires payment systems to identify and block restricted gambling transactions. Card deposits get declined, and a bettor on Trustpilot in February 2025 reported a bounced BookMaker check and $150 in bank fees. Crypto avoids the blocking and introduces the next problem. Our online gambling safety guide covers wallet hygiene.

Crypto cannot be reversed. The Federal Trade Commission’s own guidance says cryptocurrency payments “do not come with legal protections” and “typically are not reversible.” Send Bitcoin to the wrong address, or to a book that does not credit it, and it is gone. One Trustpilot reviewer reports $25,000 sent to a BookMaker address in 2022 that was never credited; that is an uncorroborated single account and we cite it as one.

The tax exposure is yours alone. No W-2G, no reporting by the book, full taxability, and from 2026 a deduction capped at 90% of losses.

The statute is still there. If you are in Washington, Illinois, Connecticut or Tennessee, an offence exists on the text even if nobody has been charged with it. If gambling itself is the problem rather than the law, our gambling addiction page has the resources. Regulators in those states have shown they will act against the operators. Whether that ever extends to customers is a decision they have not yet made.

Common questions

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