Absolute Poker Co-Founder Enters Guilty Plea

Brent Beckley, co-founder of Absolute Poker, entered a plea of guilty to the criminal charges he faced in relation to the Black Friday online poker crackdown earlier this year. Beckley was one of 11 individuals indicted on April 15 in the shutdown of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker in the United States.

“I knew it was illegal to accept credit cards from players to gamble on the Internet,” Beckley said. “I knew it was illegal to deceive the banks in this way.”

At Tuesday’s hearing at a federal court in Manhattan, Beckley pled guilty to violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), as well as conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud. The plea was part of an agreement with prosecutors, under which Beckley will expect to serve between a year and 18 months in prison.

It is unclear whether this plea agreement will have any impact on the many other legal battles and complex issues that have arisen since Black Friday. According to the Wall Street Journal, lawyers for Absolute Poker and PokerStars either refused to comment or had not responded to requests for comment on the case.

While individual cases have moved forward to varying degrees, perhaps the biggest fight of all is still outstanding – the $3 billion civil lawsuit that has been filed by the US government against the three poker sites.

Another outstanding issue is the ultimate fate of Full Tilt Poker. Recently, Group Bernard Tapie came to an agreement with FTP and the Justice Department that would tentatively allow the French investment group to take control of FTP’s assets. This purchase would potentially give the Justice Department funds with which to pay back American players, while also giving GBT the opportunity to restart Full Tilt’s operations outside of the United States.

Of the three sites affected by the Black Friday indictments, none was hit harder than Absolute Poker (and by extension, the Cereus Poker Network). Not only was Absolute the smallest of the three sites, but it also had a higher percentage of American players than the other two sites.