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BetOnSports Founder Pleads Guilty To Racketeering
Hugh Pickens writes "The founder of Internet- and telephone-based gambling operation BetOnSports has entered guilty pleas to three US charges, including a racketeering charge, and will forfeit $43.7 million to the US government as part of a plea agreement. Beginning in the mid- to late-1990s, Gary Kaplan set up businesses in Antigua and later Costa Rica to provide sports betting services to US residents through web sites and toll-free telephone numbers. Those numbers terminated in Houston or Miami, and were then forwarded to Costa Rica by satellite transmitter or fiber-optic cable. Some of Kaplan's web servers were located in Miami and were remotely controlled from Costa Rica. People became customers by depositing money in a BetOnSports account. By 2004, the BetOnSports organization's principal base of operations in Costa Rica employed about 1,700 people, had nearly one million registered customers and accepted more than 10 million sports bets. Now bankrupt, BetOnSports took in $1.25 billion in 2004, with 98 percent of that revenue coming from bets made through its web site by clients in the United States. 'Gary Kaplan made millions of dollars by making it too easy for people to gamble away their hard-earned money without having to leave their homes,' said FBI agent John Gillies. 'Today's guilty plea should have a lasting effect because Kaplan was not only the founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of the pioneers of illegal online gambling.'"
The only one hurt in this operation was the American government who didn't get their cut.
The internet exposes many holes in the law, the most obvious one being locality in this case. What's the difference between driving to the nearby rez for some Pai Gow and going online to bet on the ponies?
"Gary Kaplan made millions of dollars by making it too easy for people to gamble away their hard-earned money without having to leave their homes"
I can't be trusted! Protect me, nanny state!
'Gary Kaplan made millions of dollars by making it too easy for people to gamble away their hard-earned money without having to leave their homes,' said FBI agent John Gillies.
The IRS was pissed it wasn't getting a cut of the action.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
After all, Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. This guy told the gamblers the truth about what he was doing, and they gave him money voluntarily.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'm still not sure what this guy did wrong other than offer a convenient service to gamblers.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
His mistake was not leaving the US when he had enough money to live independently. That or he was too cheap and didn't "donate" to the right legislators.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Not really a victimless crime if someone has a gambling addiction. And online gambling doesn't help prevent that lifestyle. But, if it's legalized and regulated, maybe there is hope, but setting limits on how much someone can gamble within a time period. Because, when that person becomes dirt broke, isn't it going to be a burden on our welfare system?
I am a statistician (says my degree at least). Yet, on occation, I buy a lottery ticket and visit a casino. Fully aware that my chance to win is minimal compared to the chance that I lose. It's a game. It's fun. It's a cheap little thrill. It's nothing I'd put my last 5 bucks on.
The problem isn't so much that people engage in gambling. It's not really a problem unless you plan to make money that way. As long as you see it as a pastime and realize that it's basically a pastime like so many others where you pay to do it, from playing paintball to collecting stamps, there's no problem.
It becomes a problem when people live in the delusion of having a "system" to beat the house and make money that way. It does not work. It simply cannot. If there was such a thing as a "system", casinos and lottery company would have folded a long time ago.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, they do. As idiotic as it may seem to someone who knows the internet and how it works, they are actually in the delusion that they can stop this. Their idea is that if it's illegal it is not done.
What will happen? Of course, non-US residents will create offshore casinos. People will gamble there. So we'll get laws that make it illegal to gamble in other countries online (IIRC something like that already exists). People will ignore that law, knowing that the chance to be caught is minimal. Government will realize that people gamble abroad and will try to gain access to accounts to see if they get (or send) large amounts of money offshore. To do this, we'll need some sort of excuse. Something will be worked out that makes it necessary to gain access to the accounts of US people. In turn, those offshore companies will offer bank accounts offshore as well and people will put their money there. It's tricky to make it illegal to put money into foreign accounts, but I'm sure we'll see some legislation that makes it illegal to put money into certain countries. Companies will move their banking to other countries.
So what we'll see is the race between companies offering a service and government trying to come up with creative laws that make it illegal to use those services without actually slaughtering the sacred cow of international trade and free commerce. Personally, I'd recommend getting some popcorn and enjoying the show.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The owners, the loan sharks, the payday lenders, the cops, the employees, the hookers, the blackmailers ...
As for the stock market, it's legalized gambling only if you're too small to control the market. That's why the small fish get eaten alive every pull-back.
If you can count 6+ decks, you can make more money with "honest" work...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The World Trade Organization has found in favor of Antigua, and states that the US is in violation of the law by making online gambling illegal just because it wants to protect its brick and mortar casinos...
However the US threatens others with the UN, WTO, sanctions, military force when it wants to, and ignores those organizations when they become "inconvenient". And then Americans wonder why they are hated everywhere. That's ok, keep printing those dollars (the Federal Reserve is now the biggest purchaser of US treasuries - imagine that), propping up that bubble and lying to the public with imaginary "inflation" and "employment" figures, America. The whole house of cards will come down soon enough.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Plenty of people enjoy the gambling to the extent that it is worth the losses to them (Personally, my actual gambling is limited to the occasional Mega Millions ticket, but only when the expected value of the ticket goes above the cost, it is fun to fantasize about absurd wealth once in a while).
As far as the stock market, you can actually bet with the house (buy an index fund). The last 10 or 15 years certainly have been miserable, but good investment advice pretty much starts with "don't invest money that you might need short term access to in stocks"; that advice gets roundly ignored (people in their 50's and 60's frequently have huge exposure to equities, when they shouldn't), but that doesn't change the value of the advice for people that follow it, so 10 years of poor market performance is easy to view as an opportunity to buy...
Even Jim Cramer, a guy a lot of people view as a loudmouth tool of the bad guys, starts with advising people to take out insurance against catastrophes (good medical insurance and disability insurance, to protect against illness and loss of income, which are much bigger considerations for retirement than good investment performance) and to conservatively invest their retirement assets (the title of his show "Mad Money" is a reference to money that the particular investor can afford to lose, and thus can take larger risks with).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Kaplan was not only the founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of the pioneers of illegal online gambling.
Gary Kaplan may have been a pioneer of online gambling, but it took the U.S. government to pioneer the wonderful concept of illegal online gambling.
The provide a nice playing table and chairs. They provide nice cards and chips. They provide a dealer who vaguely knows the rules. They provide a public location with security to find people to play with without having to sit in a private location with strangers and large sums of money. They provide an unbiased party for dispute resolution.
And they don't always feel entitled to a percentage of every pot, pay by the hour isn't that uncommon.
Lemme put it that way, there's a reason why Switzerland and Liechtenstein managed to stay out of WW2, and it was not that they're so terribly full of hard to conquer mountains...
Hey, you gotta leave a place alone to pump your money to, you never know whether you win or lose.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.