The U.S. Department of Justice incited 11 men on Black Friday (April 15th, 2011) - Ira Rubin was one of them. Rubin has pled guilty to conspiracy for his alleged role as a payment processor for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker.
Since his arrest in Guatemala last April, 53 year-old Rubin has been in jail; he was apprehended when he was supposedly attempting to leave the country for Thailand.
Rubin is accused of 'tricking' banks by disguising payments as transactions with phony internet merchants in his dealings with the three major online poker sites. Rubin faces a prison term of 18 to 24 months at his sentencing on May 17th in Manhattan federal court according to his plea agreement. He would have been looking at a maximum sentence of up to 55 years without the plea agreement. Originally he was charged with nine counts for his role in the illegal online gambling activities, which included conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). He pled guilty to three counts on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012.
Rubin was arrested previously in 2006 for telemarketing fraud - his company assisted at least nine Canadian telemarketing firms that targeted U.S. consumers by selling nonexistent credit cards. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest on January 30th, 2008, after Rubin violated a temporary restraining order. He went into hiding in Costa Rica and allegedly began providing offshore online poker companies with illegal payment transactions.
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