PokerStars, a well-known poker gambling company that was bought out by Amaya in 2014, has just had an employee plead guilty to allegations that he was operating an online gambling business without proper licensing or verification. This results from a string of investigations by United States prosecutors that has been actively fighting back against the digital poker market.
While he had several charges against him, Paul Tate told Judge Barbara Moses that one of the charges being put against him was true and he would be pleading guilty on that count. This single charge alone has the potential to put Tate behind bars for a maximum sentence of five years. The sentencing hearing that will determine his length of punishment is going to be held in about a month on November 21st. It’s unlikely that he will be given the maximum sentence due to the guilty plea, but he will most certainly be facing some jail time for his actions.
This case started way back in the early part of 2011, which is when the United States prosecution led by attorney Preet Bharara had been successful in indicting a total of 11 people, one of which was Paul Tate. All of these people were part of successful companies such as Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and PokerStars. There was a surplus of charges that were presented against these men which ranged from money laundering all the way to bank fraud and everything in-between.
Although Amaya is a Canadian company, PokerStars itself operates out of the Isle of Man which means that Tate is a United Kingdom citizen. He began with the company back in 2006 when he worked in the technical department along with a variety of companies that worked to process online payments. Tate explained to the judge in this case that his family and himself have already faced heavy punishments for these actions, hopefully to get a lower sentence.
Amaya has explained that they were not involved in any of these actions, which all took place before the company even bought out PokerStars. They expect that this case is not going to have any effect on the company and wish to keep their hands
clean of the whole ordeal.
Back in the year 2012 PokerStars had been order to pay a massive sum of $731 million in order to settle a number of civil suits that were presented against them by the United States Justice Department. Along with this agreement, PokerStars had come to an agreement to take over Full Tilt Poker as their company had crumbled resulting from the indictments against them.
The main allegations that the United States presented against these companies was that they had operated as an offshore company in an effort to trick United States customers and banks into processing billions upon billions of dollars on their service, even though they did not have the authority to even make such requests without a proper license through the United States.
