America’s top law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has told the U.S. Congress that online poker is easy to cheat.

In a letter to U.S. Congressman Spencer Bachus, the FBI’s cyber division assistant director, Shawn Henry, said Internet poker is rife with cheating and manipulation.

The letter, written last month, was released yesterday during a hearing by a U.S. House of Representatives committee that is looking at the issue of legalizing online poker and other forms of online gambling.

Bachus, a Republican from Alabama, is the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

The chairman of that committee, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, has introduced legislation that would legalize, license, tax and regulate online gambling.

“There are several ways to cheat at online poker, none of which are legal,” Henry wrote.

Then, outlining how collusion can easily occur in a game of Internet poker, Henry wrote: “Technology exists to manipulate online poker games in that it would only take two or three players working in unison to defeat the other players who are not part of the team.”

The FBI official then noted that the online poker sites could police themselves to eliminate collusion-type cheating, but have no motivation to do so.

“The online poker vendors could detect this activity and put in place safeguards to discourage cheating, although it is unclear what the incentive would be for the vendor,” Henry wrote.

Internet gambling was not made illegal but was severely restricted in the USA when the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006.

UIGEA made it illegal for U.S. banks and credit card companies to process Internet gambling transactions.

Since credit cards were the main method for funding online gambling, the legislation severely cut back the number of Americans playing Internet poker and other Internet casino games.

Congressman Frank’s proposed legislation would, basically, reverse UIGEA.

“The government should not be in the business of telling Americans how they can spend their own money,” Frank has previously declared.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)