Mass Congressman John F. Tierney Under Fire for Dining at Antiguan Bookie’s Home

“Dinner at my wife’s brother’s house. I don’t think that people would think that’s extraordinary,” Massachusetts Congressman John F. Tierney said at a recent news conference.

That is unless your brother-in-law just happens to be Bobby Eremian, one of the first men to set up an offshore sports betting company on the island of Antigua where Tierney and his wife were invited guests. 

Tierney’s wife was recently convicted of aiding and abetting with the illegal bookmaking business her husband claimed to have no knowledge of.   A 442-count federal indictment against Eremian and his brother Daniel alleges the massive gambling ring, Sports off Shore, was run out of Eremian’s Antigua home.

From the Boston Globe:

Within a year, Bob Eremian was a fugitive from justice and Tierney’s wife, Patrice, was facing prison time after pleading guilty to helping Eremian file false tax returns and being “willfully blind” to the fact that the source of the money was illegal gambling.

Now, John Tierney’s family crisis is threatening his political future as voters ask what the Salem Democrat knew — or could easily have found out — about the rampant lawbreaking by his relatives.

The eight-term congressman is facing a tough reelection fight against Republican Richard Tisei, who has made the illegal doings of Tierney’s brothers-in-law a campaign issue. Meanwhile, Tierney is fending off accusations from Bob and Daniel Eremian that he “knew everything” about their betting operation.

The Congressman does claim to have knowledge of the bookmaking business but insists he thought it was legal. 

“Let me be 100 percent clear,” he said during a sometimes-contentious news conference earlier this month. “As I have said numerous times and consistently from the beginning, including the first day any news broke on this, I believed at that time that my brother-in-law was working in a legitimate, legal online gambling business in Antigua.”

The Globe suggests otherwise after a review of court records showing that Tierney knew his brother-in-law had fled to Antigua to escape federal prosecution for illegal sports book-making, and had recruited one of Patrice’s children, John Chew, to work with him.  Bobby Eremian also plead guilty to tax evasion in 2002.

The Globe also notes that it was public knowledge that Eremian had been under investigation since 2006.

The Boston Globe featured an extensive story Sunday regarding this subject here.

- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher