Almost 3 Years Sentence for Former Online Gambling Exec David Carruthers

From the CAP News page:

January 11, 2010 (CAP Newswire) — The former Chief Executive of BetOnSports, David Carruthers, has been jailed for a term of 33 months after his recent guilty plea to the U.S. Justice Department for charges of racketeering and conspiracy, violations of U.S. federal law.

According to The Telegraph, the charges stem from the $3.5 billion in revenue that BetOnSports raked in between 2002 and 2004. The U.S. Justice Department claimed that 98 percent of that sum came from bets made by U.S.-based clients, making it a violation of U.S. law. (Read the Telegraph article here.)

BetOnSports was based in Costa Rica at the time. Carruthers, a native of Scotland, had, in the four years of his leadership, led the company from humble beginnings to a listing on the London Stock Exchange's Aim.

This sentencing comes shortly after last year’s sentencing of BetOnSports founder, Gary Kaplan, to more than four years in prison as part of the same case. And the bottom line seems to be that the U.S. Justice Department is not relenting in its prosecutions of online gambling cases, despite the recent delay of the UIGEA implementation and other positive signs.