If you read the article, they didn't ignore the Law:

Excerpt from the article:

Cohen and Schillinger had sought legal advice and were convinced they would remain protected as long as they took bets and kept all of their assets offshore.

IMHO this is an example where the government and other people just want to tell their neighbors how they should live their lives. It appears to me they are trying to use a 45 year old law whose purpose was to stop mobsters from using phone lines to accept bets in order to stop organized crime.