Ira Rubin Pleads Guilty to Illegal Activity
Ira Rubin, now former Payment Processor, has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy from the United States Department of Justice. One of the 11 men indicted by the DOJ, he is one of the first few to succumb to the meticulous crackdown on Online Poker conspiracies and illegal activities.
Black Friday. April 15 2011, an indictment against the founders of online poker’s “Big Three” was unsealed by the federal authorities in an effort to analyse their business practices and crack down on allegations that led to charges of bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling. Amonst those that were affected included PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker. Furthermore, a restraining order was place in upwards of 75 bank accounts being used by these online poker companies and their payment processes to house said illegal money, and also 5 internet domain names.
A press release on the indictment was released detailing 11 defendants, which included the following names Bradley Franzen,Brent Beckley,Chad Elie,Ira Rubin,Isai Scheinberg,John Campos,Nelson Burtnick,Paul Tate,Raymond Bitar, Ryan Lang and Scott Tom. Each of the individuals are not all linked, each having business with one online poker company respectively.
The charges were brought upon and based on the Illegal Gambling Business Act of 1955 and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. These very same charges were also previously brought against other payment processors that were used by former sites that have now been disbanded and shut down.
Ira Rubin, 53, had been in jail since last April due to an arrest whilst attempting to flee to Thailand from Guatemala. This was made after he had been accused of assisting three major online poker sites by disguising and hiding payments as transactions with fake internet merchants.
Recently he admitted to wrongdoing and pleads guilty with an agreement of a reduced sentence. Rubin faces an 18 to 24 month of prison, when he is set to be sentences on May 17th in Manhattan federal court. This plea bargain is significantly reduced from the original 55 years of possible maximum prison time that could be served. Rubin was originally charged with nine counts, for his involvement in illegal online gambling activities. This also extended to conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). He pleaded guilty to three of these charges on Tuesday, 17th January 2012.
Previous criminal involvement included an arrest in 2006 for telemarketing fraud which saw at least nine Canadian firms selling non-existent credit cards to United States consumers, through his company. A warrant for his arrest was released on January 30th, 2008. This lead on to his involvement in illegal online activities, where he hid from the arrest in Costa Rica and began providing the offshore online poker companies with the illegal payment transactions.
[Source: Poker News]
