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Fines for Illegal Gambling Activities

The United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) has reached a milestone in its legal actions that have begun to prosecute online casino gambling companies operating in violation of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Over the past eight months the USAO investigated several companies affiliated with the online casinos industry, and arrested the nearly a dozen top executives from those companies. But the investigation process has taken time, and finally the U.S. courts are beginning to come to firm rulings about what activities were legal, and which are going to mean hefty fines and possible jail time for the executives.

NETeller is the first of the several online casino related companies companies under investigation to form an agreement for monetary forfeiture as a way to begin closing the case against NETeller. Judge P. Kevin Castel approved the agreement that NETeller will turn over US $136,000,000 in funds and revenue the company illegal acquired after the online casinos ban was effective in the United States. By agreeing to forfeit that amount NETeller will defer prosecution.

Also of concern to many of NETeller’s previous U.S. players are the frozen player accounts. Once the company went under investigation in the U.S., NETeller froze all U.S. accounts and has not allowed any online casinos players access to any of the funds they deposited prior to the account freeze. Now that the company is coming to terms though with the USAO, NETeller has agreed to release roughly $94 million to the U.S. online casino players effected. Of note however is the fact that NETeller announced last month that the company will not be paying interest on the account money to any players – they will simply receive the money the had in their account.

Then comes the next phase of the NETeller investigation, and that involves the co-founders at NETeller, Lefebvre and Lawerence. They, like the company, have severely violated the online casinos ban – in preliminary talks at this point, both men have agreed to forfeit $100,000 million in personal profits to the U.S. But that is just the beginning, once their case goes to trial the men could face as much as five years in prison and anywhere between $250,000 and double the gross pecuniary gain from their offenses.

Lawrence and Lefebvre each face a maximum term of imprisonment of five years and a maximum fine of $250 000 or twice the gross pecuniary gain from the offence. In addition, both men have admitted to forfeiture allegations requiring them to personally forfeit an additional $100 million dollars to the United States, which they are expected to pay in full prior to sentencing at the end of October.