Australian Online Poker ‘Snitch’ Daniel Tzvetkoff to Come Out of Hiding for Trial
The man many believe is solely responsible for the takedown of online poker giants, Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and UB.com in the United States is finally about to come out of hiding, according to reports in Australian media.
Daniel Tzvetkoff, the 29-year-old Aussie playboy who processed over a billion dollars of funds for the aforementioned Web poker rooms through his company Intabill, is set to testify against two of his colleagues on trial April 9.
One-time Las Vegas-based business partner, Chad Elie, and a Utah banker, John Campos, are both charged with money laundering and bank fraud in connection with the processing of funds for the one time big three Internet poker rooms. Indictments were handed down last April 15 against both men as well as executives from Full Tilt, Stars and UB.com, some of whom remain on the lam.
Tzvetkoff cut a deal with prosecutors to avoid serving the same 75 year prison sentence both Elie and Campos are currently looking at.
Elie’s lawyers are furious over the “mountain of documents” dumped upon them just days before the trial, some of which include email correspondences from Tzvetkoff.
"For example, although the government had previously produced emails for Daniel Tzvetkoff, one of the government's main witnesses in this case, the material we recently received revealed that Mr Tzvetkoff had deleted his emails from the Intabill server, which had previously been made available to the defence, and that the Tzvetkoff emails that were included in prior productions were therefore ones that Mr Tzvetkoff had cherry-picked for the government," Elie's lawyers, Barry Berke and Dani James, stated.
"Only after we pointed this out to the government did we receive a full set of Mr Tzvetkoff's materials, which included more than 90,000 documents and which we were able to access for the first time only yesterday."
Tzvetkoff was picked up months prior to the April 15 indictments while in the US attending an e-Commerce conference. It was widely rumored at the time that associates of Full Tilt Poker had tipped off US authorities as to Tzvetkoff’s whereabouts.
After serving a brief stint in a New York prison, Tzvetkoff was released and became a cooperating witness, one many believe is in protective custody. His whereabouts up to now, unknown.
"He's turned the corner, seen the light and is cooperating," former FBI agent Harold Copus, after reviewing the details of the case, told AAP.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
