Home / Poker News April 2013 / Ray Bitar Pleads Guilty – Sentenced
Ray Bitar Pleads Guilty – Sentenced
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2013-04-17 14:57
Full Tilt Poker's ex-CEO Raymond Bitar has grabbed a few headlines recently. About a week ago, around the second anniversary of the Black Friday events which exposed his
online poker operation as an international Ponzi scheme, Bitar has finally assumed responsibility by pleading guilty to charges brought against him. Today, only a week after he reached the agreement to plead guilty, he was sentenced to time served and he will have to forfeit assets worth $40 million in cash and several high value homes.
Bitar fell into the hands of the US authorities after he decided to surrender himself last July. He was taken into custody at JFK airport when he landed. Since then, he has served a total of seven days in prison. According to some of the inside sources, Bitar has expressed regret in regards to the
Full Tilt poker fiasco, although one may question that, as he may not regret what he has done so much as he regrets having been caught.
The trouble with the Raymond Bitar case is that the justice system cannot really be allowed to bring his full weight to bear against him. He is after all a Class IV heart transplant candidate, which means that if he were tossed into jail, he would effectively be denied the possibility of a heart transplant, which in his case would technically amount to a death sentence. According to the judge who delivered his sentence, Mr. Bitar requires care which the federal Bureau of Prisons is quite unable to provide.
Despite the fact that Bitar has definitely enjoyed the proceeds of the global Ponzi scheme he had set up together with a host of poker professionals, one can't help but feel like he is being made into a scapegoat. Many of the other guilty have already gotten off the hook.
