Home / Poker News June 2012 / John Campos Gets Three Months
John Campos Gets Three Months
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2012-06-29 07:41
John Campos, one of the top defendants of the Black Friday affair, has been sentenced, and it is now set: he will spend three months in a federal prison for the role he played in the processing of various funds to and from online poker operators Full Tilt Poker and
PokerStars, during the years following the 2006 UIGEA and preceding the indictments handed out on Black Friday. John Campos took advantage of his position as vice chairman of the SunFirst Bank in Utah to facilitate the transfer of online poker funds totaling about $200 million. The crimes started in late 2009.
The online poker funds transfers were disguised as transactions to and from various online merchants, in direct defiance of the 2006 UIGEA, which had forbidden financial institutions from making any sort of financial operations in regards to online gambling and
online poker interests.
Of the two high profile scapegoats, Campos was the one looking at more time: he was indicted on April 15, just like Chad Ellie, but the charges brought against him ran a wider and more dismal gamut: he was accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating illegal gambling businesses in direct violation of the 1970 Gambling Business Act and conspiracy to violate the 2006 UIGEA. Initially, Campos was looking at 45 years in jail, but he quite naturally sought to strike a plea bargain.
In March, looking to avoid an April 9 sentencing, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. His initial plea agreement was tossed out by Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, but after the prosecutors offered explanations regarding the case, the Judge eventually accepted the single charge, sentencing the defendant to 3 months in prison. According to the Judge, Campos committed a greed-driven crime. In addition to the above said prison sentence, Campos has also been banned from participating in the banking industry in any shape and form for life.
