Agence France Presse has announced that Douglas Rennick, a Canadian resident, has been indicted in the Southern District of New York, on charges of bank fraud for misrepresenting and disguising transactions between his companies, gambling companies and US resident online gambling winners.
Specifically, allegations have been made by the US Justice Department that between 2007 and mid 2009, Rennick opened numerous US bank accounts under the guise that they would be issuing rebate cheques, sponsorship cheques, refunding cheques, affiliate cheques and processing employee cheques. One of these accounts, in the name of Account Services Corporation, is alleged to have issued cheques from the Wells Fargo Bank and Union Bank to US residents gambling on the Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet, Poker Stars and Full Tilt websites. The indictment claims that Rennick and his cohorts moved over $350 million from their bank account in Cyprus into their various US bank accounts and from there, they paid out cheques to the various US resident online gambling winners.
Interestingly, the indictment of Rennick comes from the same US court that froze millions of dollars worth of assets from poker sites such as Full Tilt and Poker Stars. Maybe the same individuals are once again using the fine-print of UIGEA (persecution of the payment processing bodies) to boost federal coffers??
30 years in prison, fines exceeding $1 million, forfeiture of over $500 billion dollars is the sort of penalties that Rennick will be faced with should he be found guilty of the charges of bank fraud, money laundering etc.
… Of course, dollar amounts like these would make Rennick tantalising prey for any Justice Department, especially in current financial times, with the US facing around $11.7 billion dolloars worth of National Debt at time of writing…!
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Tags: bank fraud, Douglas Rennick
This entry was written by Nena on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 3:14 am and is filed under News.
