Rennick broke anti-gambling laws(credit:
bigberto)
In what has been a tumultuous week in the poker world following the death of Pokerlistings.com founder Andreas Oscarsson, online gambling payment processor Douglas Rennick has been charged with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses.
Allegedly, he illegally manufactured more than $350 million in payments for Internet gambling companies. Between 2007 and 2009, Rennick set up several bank accounts in false names including KJB Financial Corporation and Account Services Corporation.
According to New York PRNewswire, Rennick convinced banks his accounts would be for, ‘issuing rebate checks, refund checks, sponsorship checks, affiliate checks and minor payroll processing.’ Instead, Rennick and his entourage used the accounts to rake in profits from, ‘offshore Internet gambling companies’.
With anti-poker legislature rife in the US at the moment, it is of course illegal for banks to process funds from gambling companies. Rennick faces a host of crippling sentences, including, ‘30 years in prison and a $1 million fine on the bank fraud charge, 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine on the money laundering charge, and five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the gambling charge’.
Whether the charges will actually come to fruition remains to be seen, as Rennick currently resides in Canada. As one cynical twoplustwo forum member put it, ‘no way the canucks are extraditing him for this – he just can’t come to the US anymore’. You can check out the original article here, and the twoplustwo forum response here.