First guilty plea in US online poker case (AFP)

Monday, May 23, 2011 9:01 PM

NEW YORK (AFP) – The dweller president of a Costa Rica-based consort is covering up to 30 eld in prison after pleading blameable to illegally processing payments for cyberspace cards firms.

Bradley Franzen, 41, pleaded blameable in a borough court to slope fraud, money laundering and banned recreation offenses, Preet Bharara, the US professional for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Franzen was one of 11 people live last period in a crackdown on the three maximal online cards companies operative in the United States: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.

Most of the defendants are outside of the United States. Franzen is the prototypal to enter a blameable plea.

US accumulation prohibits US banks and another playing institutions from knowingly accepting payments for online recreation prefabricated through assign cards, electronic assets transfers and checks.

Franzen and several another defendants were accused of serving to process zillions of dollars for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker by creating phony corporations and websites.

According to US authorities, Franzen arranged for recreation assets to be disguised as payments to a fictitious playing titled "Green2YourGreen," which claimed to sell environmentally-friendly household products.

Franzen, who is from Algonquin and lives in Costa Rica, faces a peak sentence of 30 eld in prison. His sentencing fellow has not still been set.

While cyberspace recreation has been banned in the United States since 2006, online cards relic a multi-billion-dollar industry with companies using a variety of structure to flout the law, including locating their dealings offshore.

The US ban on cyberspace recreation has been challenged as an dirty trade restriction at the World Trade Organization and whatever US lawmakers are hunt to have online recreation legalized.


Source

0 comments:

Post a Comment