The Wagering Paraphernalia Act of 1961 was part of Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy’s crime-fighting legislation package. The act authorized fines up to $10,000 and prison sentences up to five years for any person who “knowingly carries or sends” in any interstate commerce any information that is conveyed as writing, paper, token, slip, bills, certificates, tickets, record, paraphernalia, or “devices used” for the purpose of “bookmaking”, “wagering pools with respect to a sporting event”, or lotteries and numbers games. The law did not apply where the wagers were legal in the state to which they were sent.
The purpose of the act seemed to be to cut off supplies to illegal gamers, especially those in numbers games and illegal lotteries that were dependent upon paper products. The act did not apply to materials carried by common carriers as a normal part of their business, to pari-mutuel materials sent to tracks where wagering was legal, to newspaper publications, or to materials used in legal lotteries.
In 1993, the penalty provisions were amended to authorize fines from $3,000 to $30,000, with maximum prison time remaining at five years.
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