BetOnSports Founder Gets Prison - 11-05-09

November 5 - Gary Kaplan, founder of BetOnSports, the online gambling site that once ruled the US betting market, has been sentenced to over four years in prison in a St. Louis court.

The court also ruled that 50 year old Kaplan must forfeit $43.6 million for obtaining money in an illegal way through his betting operations.

The forfeiture fee and sentencing were part of a plea bargain reached between the US authorities and Kaplan in one of the longest cases involving charges of illegal gambling in the country.

Kaplan has already been under house arrest for two years and seven months since he was arrested in Puerto Rico in March 2007.

The court will probably take these years into account and Kaplan may end up behind bars for another year.

On sentencing Kaplan, the US District Judge, Carol Jackson said that "Mr. Kaplan made an educated decision, a gamble if you will. Now here's the payoff."

Kaplan was also ordered to earn a high school diploma while in prison, as well as attend substance and mental health counseling.

At its peak, BetOnSports was one of the top names on the North American gambling scene. In 2004, it accepted a staggering 10 million sports bets worth $1 million.

In the same year, the company was listed on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market and earned Kaplan a cool $100 million which he deposited into a Swiss bank account.

When the company ceased operations in 2006 because of the introduction of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, customers lost $16 million.

Kaplan has made six figure donations to public charities in the last year and his lawyers argued that he wanted to spend his future doing good for the public.

Kaplan apologized for the "pain and embarrassment" that this case had caused his family.

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