Last Tuesday, December 20, 2011, the co-founder of Absolute Poker, Brent Buckley, pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud.
Absolute Poker was one of the three poker sites, along with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, that was shut down on April 15 of this year for operating illegally within the United States, where it is still against the law to play poker online.
Buckley, 31, entered his guilty plea as part of a deal that limited his prison sentence for the crime to 1 – 1 /12 years. He said he knew when he did it that it was not legal to accept credit card payments from U.S. residents for Internet gambling when he entered his plea before Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The bank fraud was perpetrated by disguising the funds and tricking the banks in the U.S. into believing that the money taken in for gambling was actually going to merchants who didn’t really exist selling random merchandise like golf balls and jewelry that didn’t exist either.
Co-founder of Absolute Poker, Buckley was listed in the court paperwork as the Director of Payments for the company. His criminal activity began, Buckley stated, in Autumn 2006, which is apt since October of 2006 is when the U.S. enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making such activities an enforceable crime.
Fortunately for the U.S. players affected by the sudden closure of Absolute Poker, prosecutors said back in May of 2006 that would allow for players to reclaim their unused funds tied up in Absolute Poker’s seized bank assets.