Five-Year Long Investigation Into Online Gambling About to Wrap Up?
Gambling911.com sources have revealed that a more than five-year investigation related to online gambling, telemarketing and alleged bank fraud is about to wrap up.
“Law enforcement agencies are under intense pressure to conclude ongoing investigations ahead of inevitable legalization of online poker, casino games and possibly even sports betting,” our source tells us. “But some of these agencies are just out for blood.”
The Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently took offline a complaint against one Don Hellinger, who is alleged to have processed payments for online gambling companies during the period January 2005 through February 21, 2006. His trial, which was scheduled to begin the first week of January, has since been postponed. Hellinger, now a successful magazine magnate, remains free and actively tweets on Twitter. One would be hard pressed to find any evidence Hellinger feared prosecution for alleged wrongdoings if you were to follow him on Twitter as we here at Gambling911.com do on a regular basis. Nor is there any evidence to suggest he is actively cooperating with US feds a la one former payment processor turned snitch Daniel Tzvetkoff, who some conjecture was entered into a witness protection program.
Our source insisted just a few months ago that the United States Attorneys Office - Eastern District of Pennsylvania “wanted blood” in regard to Hellinger, whose biggest online gambling customer back in the day was the now defunct BetOnSports.
It’s not unusual for the US Justice Department to do a complete about face. We witnessed this last month when the DOJ completely changed its standpoint on Internet gambling, affirming that a the nearly 50 year old Wire Act will no longer be applied to poker or casino games, just sports betting. So too has the Justice Department reversed course when it comes to certain individuals, those wanted in high profile Web gambling schemes.
Case in point, early last year, the US Government simply dismissed an entire indictment and all of the charges against Gregory Haggard (AKA Peter Wilson), a former Marketing Executive with BetOnSports.com.
“This is after the government had issued an Interpol arrest warrant for his arrest more than 4 years previous,” a Gambling911.com source points out. “Apparently, co-defendant (Norm) Steinberg's surrender and settlement with the prosecutors in Missouri last December (2010) might have had something to do with Haggard's dismissal, which finally concluded the prosecution once and for all in Missouri that plagued the offshore industry since July of 2006.”
In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania v. Don Hellinger, et al., the complaint alleges that defendant online gambling operators “concealed the nature and the source of their gambling payments by, among other things, breaking up payments to bettors by amounts less than $5000” and by “using innocuous names”.
“The government and SEC has been after these people since 1993,” our source says of the defendants, who are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. “The government will use the gambling case to punish this crew for their last 18 years of fraud.”
A gambling case that dates back nearly six years but apparently has other law enforcement agencies salivating as this cold case and the complex relations involved could provide Feds with much needed ammunition. The very same type of ammunition that Intabil’s Tzvetkoff provided Feds in a case against online poker giants PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and UB.com, a “how to of payment processing for the i-Gaming sector”. We would be remiss in pointing out that the Eastern District in PA does not have a whole lot of expertise in this area.
Our source, who provided information related to the arrests of executives from payment processor Neteller in early 2007 to Gambling911.com prior to any type of public dissemination, believes there is one main target in the Web gambling world that the US Feds are actively still pursuing, and to look beyond Eastern Pennsylvania towards one or more supporting agencies.
“There’s a sense the DOJ has an unsealed indictment sitting around.”
The details are scant and one of our key sources was recently exposed by another industry operative, thus making it incredibly difficult to obtain information pertaining to ongoing investigations.
But our one source warns: “Yes it is a time for the industry to celebrate all the good news coming our way over the past couple of weeks but in these coming days and weeks it’s also important not to let one’s guard down either.”
- Alejandro Botticelli, Gambling911.com
