NEW YORK - US President of a company focused on the Costa Rica fact face up to 30 years in prison convicted for illegally processing payments for Internet poker companies after pleading.
Bradley Franzen, 41, pleaded guilty in a Court of Manhattan to bank fraud, money laundering offences illegal gambling, Preet Bharara, the Attorney of U.S. for the New York Southern District, said in a news release.
Franzen was one of the 11 people accused the month last to a crackdown on the three largest companies of exploitation in the United States online poker: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.
Most of the defendants are outside the United States. Franzen is the first to enter a guilty plea.
Law prohibits United States banks American and other financial institutions to knowingly accept payments for online gaming through credit cards, electronic funds transfers and checks.
Franzen and several other defendants were accused of helping the process of the billions of dollars for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker creating phony companies and Web sites.
According to the authorities, Franzen arranged for the game of funds to be disguised payments to a fictitious company called "green2yourgreen", which claimed to sell environmentally friendly household products.
Franzen, which is Illinois and lives in Costa Rica, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. His sentencing date has not yet been defined.
Internet gambling is illegal in the United States since 2006, online poker is still an industry of several billion dollars with companies using a variety of ways to ignore the law, including locate them their operations off the coast.
The US ban on Internet gambling has been challenged as a restriction of unfair commercial practices, the World Trade Organization and some legislators we seek to have legalized gambling online.
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