(CBS) In the wild, wild west, when a poker player was caught cheating it was a capital offense, with the punishment quickly dispensed right across the card table. But today if you're caught cheating in the popular and lucrative world of Internet poker, you may get away scot-free.
At least that seems to be what is happening in the biggest scandal in the history of online gambling. A small group of people managed to cheat players out of more than $20 million.
And it would have gone undetected if it hadn't been for the players themselves, who used the Internet to root out the corruption. As a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post reveals, it raises new questions about the integrity and security of the shadowy and highly profitable industry that operates outside U.S. law.
If you had to pick the moment that the poker boom began, it was probably the day an unknown accountant named Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million at the 2003 World Series of Poker.
Suddenly every amateur with a hat, sunglasses and a stack of chips saw themselves as the next big money maker. Nearly 7,000 competed in this year's tournament for $180 million in prize money. But the fever has spread far beyond Las Vegas.
It is the richest sporting competition in the world. And yet all this pales in comparison to the half million people who are playing on the Internet right now in the unregulated world of online poker.
As we learned in a tutorial, all you have to do to play is log on to the Web, click your way to an online gambling site, open an account with your credit card, choose your game and pull up a seat at a virtual table.
"These people could be playing from anywhere in the world. They could be here in the United States. They could be, you know, in India. They could be in South Africa," Australian computer security expert Michael Josem tells correspondent Steve Kroft.
CbsNews
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