Absolute Poker co-founder pleads guilty
Brent Beckley admitted knowingly arranging for US banks to process online gambling funds.
Brent Beckley, co-founder of and director of payments for Absolute Poker, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted he knew he was breaking the law when arranging for US banks to process online gambling funds.
Eight months after Beckley, and 10 others including the founders of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were indicted on charges including money laundering and illegal gambling offenses in a crackdown by the Department of Justice, the 31 year-old entered the plea in US District Court in Manhattan, saying he knew it was illegal to accept credit cards so that customers could gamble online.
“I knew that it was illegal to deceive the banks,” Beckley told Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis in a plea deal that calls for him to receive a sentence of between a year and a year and a half in prison. Sentencing was set for 19 April next year.
On 15 April, now more commonly known as Black Friday, US prosecutors, in a document entitled US vs Scheinberg et al, accused PokerStars’ Isai Scheinberg and Paul Tate, Full Tilt’s Raymond Bitar and Nelson Burtnick and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet’s Scott Tom and Brent Beckley, as well as five others, of having allegedly: “[A]rranged for the money received from US gamblers to be disguised as payments to hundreds of non-existent online merchants purporting to sell merchandise such as jewelry and golf balls”.
In May Absolute Poker reached an agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to enable its US players to recover their money after games were interrupted by the criminal prosecution.
At the beginning of this month Black Friday indictees John Campos and Chad Elie attended a hearing to debate their motions to dismiss, however federal Judge Lewis Kaplan said: “I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the entire indictment will be dismissed.”
The duo had submitted their respective motions to dismiss in October, with their itemised arguments including claims that the Illegal Gambling Business Act is sufficiently vague in relation to online poker.
The announcement comes just one month after SunFirst Bank, the financial institution at the heart of the ongoing investigations which was formerly part-owned by Campos, was placed into receivership.
Fellow indictee Ira Rubin’s attorney was also present at the hearing, however Rubin is reportedly unlikely to go to trial after his attorney Stuart Meissner claimed to have reached “an agreement in principle with the government.”
Earlier this month PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker received a further extension to their deadline to respond to the amended civil complaint. Their new deadline is 2 January.