Payment processor Elie gets five months in prison
Chad Elie had pleaded guilty in March " becomes fourth Black Friday indictee to be sentenced.
Former payment processor to Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker, Chad Elie, has been sentenced to five months in prison by a judge in a Manhattan federal court.
Elie pleaded guilty to a single count of bank fraud in March having been charged by the government with opening “bank accounts in the United States, including through deceptive means, through which each of the Poker Companies received payments from United States-based gamblers”.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sentenced Elie yesterday, said the former payment processor defendant “really didn’t care whether what he was doing was legal”.
“He was in a sense playing a game with the government, a catch-me-if-you-can kind of game,” Kaplan went on, according to Bloomberg News. “That just can’t be overlooked.”
After receiving his sentence, Bloomberg reports Elie as saying: “I’d just like to apologise to my family and friends for the pain and disappointment I caused them and ask for their forgiveness.”
Elie was one of the 11 people named in the Black Friday indictments of last year.
He had initially pleaded not guilty, however after changing his representation in January, changed his plea to guilty just two weeks before his case was due to go to trial on 9 April.
Prior to that delay he had seen a motion to dismiss – submitted along with former SunFirst Bank part-owner John Campos – thrown out by Kaplan.
Elie becomes the fourth Black Friday indictee to be sentenced. In June, Campos became the first of the 11 indictees to receive a prison term, with Kaplan sentencing him to three months in prison.
Since then Absolute Poker head of payments Brent Beckley has been sentenced to 14 months in prison and payment processor Ira Rubin received a three-year sentence.
Meanwhile Former Full Tilt Poker director of payments Nelson Burtnick was released on US$500,000 bail after returning to the United States and surrendering to authorities last month.
Burtnick has pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against him and Full Tilt CEO Ray Bitar in July’s superseding indictment, with 11 counts including money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to violate UIGEA brought against the pair. Burtnick’s bail amount, confirmed by BusinessWeek, is just one fifth of the $2.5m paid by Bitar.