Key Cantor Gaming Execs May Have had Role in Sports Betting Probe: Colbert Caves

The New York Times is reporting that federal prosecutors are investigating whether top executives at Cantor Fitzgerald LP's gambling unit participated in the company accepting illegal sports bets.

Cantor Senior Executive Lee Amaitis has been mentioned following a guilty plea entered by former Cantor employee, Mike Colbert.  The former sportsbook director admitted to accepting illegal bets.

The Colbert plea was revealed last week following the unsealing of federal court documents.

Colbert and 24 others, some with ties to offshore sports betting powerhouse Pinnacle Sports, were indicted last year for their alleged roles in the illegal gambling ring.  Two of the three individuals named as executives at Pinnacle Sports have also entered guilty pleas in recent weeks and are cooperating with federal authorities.

Cantor Fitzgerald, best known as a bond brokerage, operates sports books through its Cantor Gaming unit.

Colbert is fully cooperating with the Feds and naming names, the Times report.  Amaitis, a long time familiar face in the world of Vegas sportsbooks, is just one individual whose name has surfaced.

The Times notes that court documents describe Mr. Colbert as someone who reported to the gambling unit's chief executive, a reference to Mr. Amaitis.

Additional charges have yet to be filed against Cantor or any more of its executives, including Amaitis, however, the investigation is believed to still be active. 

A.G. Burnett, the chairman of the Nevada board, said in an interview last week that a separate gaming board investigation into Colbert and Cantor Gaming’s potential knowledge of the sports betting ring was expected to conclude shortly.

Stranger Than Fiction

The Cantor name is no stranger to controversies involving offshore gambling operatives.

In the true life stranger than fiction category, Cantor Fitzgerald Securities and its subsidiary eSpeed network are one for the books, reported Judi McLeod & David Hawkins for the Canada Free Press back in July.  

Cantor Fitzgerald's New York office, on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 685 employees in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks more than any other employer. Its e-Speed electronic bond-trading network lost 125 souls.



Happily for the disciples of "Kyoto Mo" (Canadian Maurice Strong), who argues that global climate change is driven by anthropogenic gases emitted by inhabitants of the Anglosphere, a six-member eSpeed carbon-credit trading team escaped death. Their annual one-day fishing trip had to be cancelled about 8 a.m. on the fateful morning of September 11, due to alleged bad weather over the Atlantic. Can anyone confirm the weather? New York looked pretty sunny.

Hearing that the Twin Towers had been hit, the six lucky fishers hightailed it to New Jersey, to what Joseph Noviello, executive vice president said of Rochelle Park, N.J., "where we had duplicates of everything that was destroyed at our offices in the world Trade Center." 



Not only did the six execs happen to have a WTC duplicate to turn to, but by napping on the floor, including one who grabbed shuteye by resting his head on an overturned coffee cup, they got an electronic trading operation up and running within two days of the tragic events.



Almost four years after 9/11, this bizarre birth of the Cantor-eSpeed electronic trading operation seems to have morphed itself into Kyoto Mo's "Global Hub for Carbon Commerce", Judi McLeod & David Hawkins explained.



In late-May 2005, six executives of Cantor Fitzgerald were among 36 arrested in gambling raids on the illegal Safe Deposit Sports gambling ring, in New York.

Gambling911.com at the time confirmed an ongoing investigation into others allegedly involved with an offshore sportsbook Safe Deposit Sports business, which many believe could have led to the downfall of mighty BetonSports, having leased space from the later groups sprawling office complex in San Pedro, Costa Rica's nine story Mall San Pedro.

In an ironic twist, one of the executives learned of his pending arrest after reading about it on Gambling911.com that morning. 

Pinnacle Sports Tries to Cut Off The Feds

Late last year, Gambling911.com learned that federal agents placed in charge of smoking out Curacao-based Pinnacle Sports were completely cut off and could no longer access their website from the United States. 

Pinnacle began blocking gamblers from the US following the Colbert indictment and charges filed against three of that company’s former executives.

Pinnacle is still very much in operation, however, it has long claimed to prohibit bets from anyone residing within the US even though last year’s indictment seems to suggest certain individuals found ways around this policy, including said federal agents.

- Alejandro Botticelli, Gambling911.com