Online Casino News: Kaplan
Pleads Guilty
by Joanne R Thursday August 27, 2009 at
10:23 PM
It is unknown whether the changing of
the online casino gambling laws will
change the outcome of those that have
already been persecuted for offering
their services, but one can only hope
that those that have gone to jail will
be released as a result of it. We all
knew it was coming, but Gary Kaplan has
officially plead guilty to offering
online casino gambling and will serve
jail time for his crime.
Kaplan has agreed to give up more than
$43 million in earnings from his online
casino businesses, and will be facing a
jail term of somewhere between 41 and 51
months in addition to that fine. Kaplan
went before the judge and admitted that
he had in fact been running offshore
online casinos in Aruba, Antigua and
Costa Rica. He admitted that he had
offered those online casino services to
Americans, thus breaking US law.
Kaplan plead guilty to violations of the
Federal Wire act and to “conspiracy to
violate the racketeering statute.”
Authorities said that this was a big
blow to the online casino industry as
BetOnSports was one of the biggest
online casinos out there. They have more
than a million clients and have done
well over a billion dollars in revenue.
They said that as Kaplan was one of the
“pioneers” of the “illegal” online
casino industry that this would show the
other people in the industry that they
are serious about their prosecutions and
that they are not to be messed with. The
idea is that they can strike fear in the
hearts of online casino gamblers and put
an end to the industry –but what they
don’t realize is that their chances of
that actually happening are pretty slim.
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