Former fleer and Sports Offshore manipulator Richard Sullivan has pleaded hangdog to illegal gambling charges. That’s nearly 14 years after he was first indicted by a federal grand panel inward Boston.
Sullivan, 73, was arrested inward Aug on his arriver at New York’s John the Evangelist F. Jack Kennedy International Airport on a flight from Antigua, where now-defunct Sports Offshore was based. It’s unclear whether he deliberately returned to the US to turn of events himself in.
Sullivan was among the first to be charged under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), a jurisprudence enacted in 2006 to foreclose U.S. citizens from using the U.S. banking system to physical process online play transactions.
Sports Offshore was an online sports betting platform licensed inwards Antigua that processed bets from US customers. The business collected over $22 1000000 and laundered more than $10 billion inward checks and wire transfers, according to prosecutors.
The sportsbook created case companies to launder the proceeds and to avoid detecting past US authorities. They also employed around 50 agents inward the continental U.S. who solicited customers and equanimous debts, which were forwarded to Antigua, prosecutors said.
Industry Pioneers
The seaward sportsbook operators that emerged in Antigua inward the mid-to-late 1990s considered themselves pioneers of a brand-new tech industry. This was at a time when it was non explicitly percipient that what they were doing was illegal.
At least, that was until 2002, when the US Department of Justice issued an view that the 1962 Wire Act, which prohibited sports wagering via “a conducting wire communication,” could follow applied to the internet.
These sportsbooks chose Antigua because the Caribbean-island land had opted to commit inwards high up quality international fiberoptic cable's length substructure and promised low taxes in the desire of nurturing a tech industry inward the dawning net age.
When federal authorities began going after its online gaming operators, Antigua complained to the World Trade Organization (WTO), claiming the U.S. had violated its dedication to unloose swop inward recreational services.
The WTO in agreement(p) and awarded Antigua the compensate to suspend $21 billion annually inward intellectual dimension rights held by U.S. companies.
Congressman Embroiled
Sullivan operated Sports Offshore with Todd Lyons and brothers Henry Martyn Robert and Book of the Prophet Daniel Eremian. In Dec 2011, First Council of Lyons and Book of the Prophet Daniel Eremian were sentenced to quaternary years and trinity years inwards prison, respectively, and were ordered to waive to a greater extent than $30 jillion betwixt them.
The brothers’ sister, Patrice Tierney, is married to St. John the Apostle F. Tierney, who, at the time, was a Massachusetts Bay Colony Democratic congressman. In 2011, Patrice Tierney was sentenced to 30 days inward prison for “aiding and abetting the filing of untrue taxation returns” related to to Sports Offshore.
Robert Eremian remains a fugitive from justice from justice.
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