Ex CEO of sports betting site pleads guilty in U.S.

A former sports betting site chief Executive Officer, David Carruthers has pleaded guilty to charges relating to running an illegal gambling and sports betting company and for illegally using account holders money to run the sports betting company. Mr Carruthers a British citizen was the CEO of BETonSPORTS.com a sports betting company based in Costa Rica, and at the time that BETonSports ceased trading in 2006, it is claimed by the U.S Justice Department that over 250 of BETonSPORTS customers had lost up to $20m.

Mr Carruthers has entered a plea bargain deal with the U.S, Department of Justice to reduce the charges he faces and as such his guilty plea although effectively could still carry a jail term of up to 20 years is more likely to carry a jail term of 33 months. The deal that Mr Carruthers has entered into with the Justice Department resulted in seven further fraud charges relating to the online sports betting operation being dropped in return for assistance with the case against other leading figures who ran the sports betting BETonSports operation.

Mr Carruthers was arrested in 2006 when he was travelling through Dallas and has been under house arrest ever since at a hotel. Gary Kaplan the founder of the AIM listed former sports betting site BETonSPORTS and five other key people within the organisation will also face a trial in September in respect of running an illegal off-shore sports betting site. There is some controversy attached to the prosecutions as The European Commission believe that the U.S is contravening WTO rules.