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It came to light Monday night that Full Tilt Poker disgraced CEO Raymond Bitar was released after posting $2 million in cash and property to secure his $2.5 million bond. This included a warehouse owned by the one-time Internet poker kingpin.
None of this was entirely surprising. Immediately following his arrest at New York’s JFK Airport last week, a judge had indicated Bitar would be allowed out on bail.
Prosecutors attempted to prevent this from happening and they almost succeeded by encouraging the judge to require five individuals with “strong financial standing” to vouch for Mr. Bitar.
Who in their right mind would do this? After all, the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York unsealed a second indictment against Bitar immediately following his arrest claiming he had bilked millions of dollars from players outside the US in an effort to prolong an elaborate ponzi scheme. He is accused of defrauding bettors out of more than $430 million by falsely promising that their money would be kept in “segregated accounts.”
Amazingly, five individuals have stepped forward to back his bail commitment.
Bitar may have figured his days were numbered at the time he voluntarily surrounded to aw enforcement last week. He lived much of the past year in Ireland, a nation notorious for taking its sweet ‘ol time extraditing suspected criminals back to the US. Ireland was also conveniently the home of Full Tilt Poker.
Bitar was also discovered earlier this year attempting to pull $24 million from an account US authorities were previously unaware of, according to Nathan Vardi of Forbes.com.
At least we can safely scratch Full Tilt Poker frontmen Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson from the “List of Five”. They, too, are accused by the US Attorney’s Office of perpetrating the ponzi scheme.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
