Online Gambling Founder Pleads Guilty
UncategorizedGary Kaplan, founder of BetOnSports.com, an offshore illegal gambling business plead guilty today in federal court to charges of conspiracy and violating the Wire Wager Act.
As part of the plea Kaplan will forfeit more than $43 million to U.S. officials. Kaplan had the money transferred from a Swiss bank account via wire to a U.S. District court band account a week prior to his guilty plea. Kaplan will be sentenced up to 51 months in prison.
BetOnSports was highly successful and attracted a large number of U.S. customers. By 2004, the BetOnSports organization’s principal base of operations in Costa Rica employed approximately 1,700 people. During the year ended Jan. 31, 2004, BetOnSports had close to 1 million registered customers, accepted over 10 million sports bets in a cumulative gross amount that exceeded one billion dollars.
In mid-2004, Kaplan made a successful public offering of the stock of BetOnSports on the London Alternative Investment Market that netted him over $100,000,000. Those funds eventually found their way into various Isle of Jersey trusts, which invested the funds in Swiss bank accounts.
“Gary Kaplan made millions of dollars by making it too easy for people to gamble away their hard earned money without having to leave their homes,” said John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in St. Louis.
“Today’s guilty plea should have a lasting effect because Kaplan was not only the founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of the pioneers of illegal online gambling.”
Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.