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Absolute Poker Founder Brent Beckley Sentenced to 14 Months in Jail
Absolute Poker Founder Brent Beckley Sentenced to 14 Months in Jail
July 24th, 2012
Yesterday evening New York time co-founder and co-owner of infamous online poker sites Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, Brent Beckley has been sentenced to 14 months in prison due to his involvement in the Black Friday scandal.Brent Beckley was indicted in the US on April 15th 2011 along with other personalities from the world of online poker of conspiring to commit bank fraud, money laundering and providing illegal online gambling.
The event was known as Black Friday and saw the shutdown of many major online poker sites that accepted US players such as Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Only PokerStars managed to recover from the scandal.
The poker sites that were hit the most were Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Both companies were working under the same umbrella and were run among others by the now sentenced Brent Beckley.
Brent Beckley was arrested in 2011 and in December the same year he submitted a guilty plea hoping that this will reduce his sentence considerably. At that time the judge handling the case hinted that Beckley may receive a very harsh sentence in order to set an example.
Sources report that after Judge Lewis Kaplan announced the sentence he commented that:
"The sentence has to make clear that the government of the United States means business in these types of cases."
Beckley is supposed to have responded that he had "fooled myself into thinking that what I was doing was OK."
The sentence the prosecutors handling the case demanded was between 12 and 18 month. So the 14 months sentencing can be considered mild compared to the initial intention of Lewis Kaplan to make an example out of Beckley.
Brent Beckley is at this moment the second Black Friday defendant that has been sentenced in the US. About two months ago Judge Lewis Kaplan also sentenced SunFirst Bank executive John Campos to a three months prison term.
Other Black Friday defendants that are at this moment awaiting sentencing are Chad Elie, Ryan Lang, Bradley Franzen and others. Probably the most high profile defendant in this case is however former Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar.
Tags: Black Friday, Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet, Brent Beckley, US Online Poker Legalization, US Online Gambling Legislation, USA
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