Gambling Site Pleads Guilty in U.S. Case
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BetonSports pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and agreed to cooperate in a case against the companyâs founder and other defendants.
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Two defendants in the O.J. Simpson robbery case pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Las Vegas to reduced charges as part of a deal to testify against the former football star and others in the theft of sports memorabilia.
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(InfoWorld) - Three U.S. men and one man living in France have pleaded guilty to charges related to a stock manipulation scheme that included sending out tens of millions of spam messages to pump up the stock value of 15 companies, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. The four men cost investors more than $20 million in their so-called pump-and-dump scheme, the DOJ said. Michael Saquella, also known as Michael Paloma, 47, of Mesa, Arizona., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria on Aug. 20. Lawrence J. Kaplan, 63, of Scottsdale, Arizona, pleaded guilty on July 25, in Alexandria to similar charges. Henry "Hank" J. Zemla, 38, of Harris Township, Michigan, also pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria on July 20. The three defendants are scheduled to be sentenced between late November and early February. Saquella pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of electronic mail fraud involving 15 publicly traded companies. Kaplan pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud involving 14 of these companies, and Zemla pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud involving one of the companies. The plea agreements for all three defendants were unsealed Thursday. The scheme involved stocks from companies including eDollars, Xtreme Technologies, and PokerBook Gaming. Justin Medlin, 26, of Paris, also pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria on Aug. 20 to a criminal information charging him with one count of electronic mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and electronic mail fraud involving seven of the companies. Medlin's plea agreement was unsealed Thursday. He will be sentenced on Nov. 30. The maximum penalties for each of the fraud charges is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The stock manipulation schemes generally followed a similar pattern, the DOJ said. The defendants generally solicited small, privately held companies that needed to raise money. One of the defendants would offer to help the company raise significant money through the sale of the company's stock, and then the defendants would list the company's shares on the Pink Sheets, a price quotation system primarily used for trading small companies' stocks. The group of defendants would then gain control of a majority of the stock of the company, the DOJ said. The co-conspirators then engaged in deceptive and manipulative trading practices to boost the price and volume of the company's stock, the DOJ said. In some cases, members of the conspiracy encouraged investors to purchase companies' stock by giving the investors free-trading shares in return for buying blocks of shares at agreed-upon prices, thereby creating the illusion of trading volume and active investor interest. In other instances, members of the conspiracy bought and sold shares of the companies' stock between and among themselves to give the appearance of investor interest, the DOJ said. The co-conspirators also falsely manipulated the price and volume of each company's stock by making materially false and misleading statements in news releases and in spam e-mails distributed by Medlin and other spammers to tens of millions of U.S. e-mail addresses, in an effort to create artificial demand for the companies' stock, the DOJ said. In related actions, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against Saquella and Kaplan for their part in the schemes to manipulate the price and volume of the companies' securities. Three other defendants, Steven P. Luscko, Gregory A. Neu, and Brian G. Brunette, have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in federal court in Alexandria for their roles in related stock manipulation schemes. Luscko and Neu were each sentenced to five years in prison and Brunette was sentenced to one year in prison.
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20 years prison time? Three West African defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges of running an advance-fee scheme that targeted U.S. victims with promises of millions of dollars, including money from an estate and a lottery.â¦
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Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have agreed to pay a total of $31.5 million to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.Microsoft will pay $21 million, Google will pay $3 million, and Yahoo will pay $7.5 million, the DOJ said in a news release. The three companies neither contest nor admit that they promoted illegal online gambling by running advertisements for gambling Web sites between 1997 and this year.The settlements stem from an investigation into illegal online gambling by U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway of the Eastern District of Missouri, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service. Hanaway&#39;s office indicted the founder of Betonsports.com, 10 other people, and four companies on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and fraud in a crackdown on online gambling on June 1, 2006.Hanaway filed a new indictment against Betonsports, three other companies, and 12 people on June 28 of this year.Unregulated online gambling is illegal in the United States, the DOJ said. The three companies were accused of procuring participants via the advertisements they ran for illegal activity. Those actions fall under the U.S. aiding and abetting statute, the agency said.The Microsoft settlement includes a $4.5 million fine and a $7.5 million contribution to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The company also agreed to create a $9 million online advertising campaign, focused on young people, saying that online gambling is illegal under U.S. law. The campaign will run for three years, beginning in early 2008, the DOJ said.Yahoo has paid $3 million to the U.S. government, and it will provide $4.5 million worth of online advertising to a public-service campaign designed to inform users that operators and participants in online or telephone-based sports and casino-type gambling in the United States may be subject to arrest and prosecution.&quot;These sums add to the over $40 million in forfeitures and back taxes this office has already recovered in recent years from operators of these remote-control illegal gambling enterprises,&quot; Hanaway said in a statement. &quot;Honest taxpayers and gambling industry personnel who do follow the law suffer from those who promote illegal online behavior.&quot;Google said, in a statement, that it has cooperated with the investigation. &quot;While we did not admit any wrongdoing, the Department of Justice has advised that online gambling is illegal in the United States and ads to promote it are improper,&quot; the company said. &quot;Google voluntarily discontinued running such ads, which were a very small part of our AdWords business, in April 2004.&quot;Yahoo said it stopped running ads for gambling sites &quot;years ago,&quot; according to a statement. &quot;After the U.S. Attorney&#39;s Office contacted Yahoo with its concerns, we worked cooperatively over several years to reach this settlement,&quot; the company said.Microsoft was preparing a statement Wednesday afternoon.
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Description: John Rowland pleads guilty to one federal conspiracy charge related to his acceptance of gifts and services from companies doing business with the state.
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Two defendants in the O.J. Simpson  robbery case pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Las Vegas to reduced  charges as part of a deal to testify against the former  football star and others in the theft of sports memorabilia.
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Microsoft Corp, Google Inc and Yahoo  Inc agreed to a settlement worth $31.5 million to resolve  accusations that the companies promoted illegal Internet  gambling, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.
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The U.S. governmentÂs move to criminalize the processing of online wagers led to a Black Mondy for the online-gambling industry.
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A founder of payment processor NETeller Plc pleaded guilty on Friday to a conspiracy charge over the handling of billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds.
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An Iowa man has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in an underground network that distributed pirated software, games, movies and music over the Internet.
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A former executive from Enron Corp.&#39;s defunct high-speed Internet unit pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy related to the scandal-choked company&#39;s collapse.
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MOUNT HOLLY, N.J. -- A man charged with helping to run a gambling ring along with former hockey star Rick Tocchet pleaded guilty to bookmaking Friday and agreed to cooperate with authorities.
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The former head of human resources at America Online pleaded guilty yesterday to a wire-fraud charge in connection with the theft of &#36;100,000 from the Internet firm.
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A former Goldman Sachs associate accused of being the mastermind behind a complex insider-trading scheme pleaded guilty on Tuesday.
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The settlement worth $31.5 million resolves accusations that the companies promoted illegal Internet gambling, the Justice Department said.
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The three largest Internet companies have agreed to pay a combined $31.5 million to settle federal civil allegations they took ads for illegal gambling, the U.S. Attorney for eastern Missouri said Wednesday.