Home / Poker News July 2012 / Black Friday Fallout – AP Co-founder Sentenced
Black Friday Fallout – AP Co-founder Sentenced
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2012-07-24 12:56
Although it may seem like the US legal system and its prosecutors have stopped pursuing the Black Friday indictments as they wait for a solution in the Full Tilt Poker case, nothing could be further from the truth. None of those indicted on April 15, 2011 are off the hook. In fact, the legal machine – as slowly as it does – keeps moving forward all the time, churning up and spitting out all those who don’t cooperate, or aren’t in a position to provide any sort of useful information. Besides Full Tilt Poker and
PokerStars, Absolute Poker and its Cereus sister-site UB were affected by the Black Friday events as well.
AP co-founder Brent Beckley was sentenced to 14 months in jail for his involvement in the online poker operation, which – prior to April 15, 2011 – had conducted business in the US illegally. A total of 11 people were indicted on Black Friday, all linked to the above said online poker operations in some way. The charges brought against them ran a wide gamut and included illegal gambling, money laundering and bank fraud, as well as conspiracy to commit all those crimes.
Beckley has apparently told US District Judge Lewis Kaplan that at one point he had fooled himself into thinking that what he was doing was in fact legal and right. Despite the fact that he had cooperated with the authorities, Beckley was a handed a rather harsh sentence. It looks like authorities wanted to make an example of him and show that the US authorities were indeed serious about cracking down on illegal businesses of all types.
Originally, in light of the gravity of the deeds he was charged with, Beckley was looking at a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. His cooperation earned him a reduced deal though. Still, given John Campos’ three months sentence, things did turn out a bit harsh for the former AP boss.
