BetOnSports
Founder Pleads Guilty
The man who founded and ran the online
sports gambling operation BetOnSports, with
operations in Costa Rica, pleaded guilty and
agreed to forfeit more than us$43 million in
proceeds, US prosecutors announced Friday.
Gary Kaplan, 50, entered a guilty plea to
conspiracy and violating wagering laws in
federal court in St. Louis, Missouri,
authorities said. Justice Department
officials said Kaplan last week had wired
the entire forfeited amount from his Swiss
bank account to the court.
"Today's guilty plea should have a lasting
effect because Kaplan was not only the
founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of
the pioneers of illegal online gambling,"
said John V. Gillies, special agent in
charge of the FBI office in St. Louis.
Kaplan's Costa Rica-based BetOnSports
operation had nearly a million customers
from the United States and other countries
who bet more than a billion dollars, law
enforcement officials said.
Under the plea agreement, Kaplan will be
sentenced to between 41 and 51 months in
prison when he goes before a judge on
October 27. He has been held without bond
since he was arrested in March 2007.
Kaplan's toll-free telephone lines
terminated in Houston or Miami, and then
were forwarded to Costa Rica by satellite
transmitter or fiber-optic cable. Some of
Kaplan's Web servers were located in Miami
and were remotely controlled from Costa
Rica. People became customers by depositing
money in a BetOnSports account.
By 2004, the BetOnSports organization's
principal base of operations in Costa Rica
employed about 1,700 people. In the year
before Jan. 13, 2004, BetOnSports had nearly
1 million registered customers and accepted
more than 10 million sports bets exceeding
us$1 billion, the DOJ said. |
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