$400 000 PAY-OFF FOR LOUSIANA IN SPORTINGBET CASE

23 March 2007

State officials admit impossibility of proceeding....in return for a cash payment

The drama that saw then Sportingbet.com chairman and UK citizen Peter Dicks arrested and detained in New York last year entered its final act this week when state of Lousiana officials accepted a punitive payment of $400 000 from Sportingbet and closed the case.

2TheHeadAdvocate.com, a Lousiana legal industry publication reports that Internet gambling charges were dismissed against the executive, who was visiting New York on non-gambling related business when detained on a covert warrant issued in Lousiana. But extradition issues left the case nearly impossible to prosecute, St. Landry Parish District Attorney’s Office admitted.

State Police, working with St. Landry prosecutors, had secured sealed warrants in May in an investigation that focused on Sportingbet PLC, a company that operates out of England, where online gambling is legal.

The company’s former chairman, Peter Dicks, was arrested on the Louisiana warrant in September on arrival in New York.

But Dicks was subsequently freed because New York law allows extradition only when the accused is physically present in the state where the alleged crime was committed. Dicks could have been arrested had he set foot in Louisiana, but prosecutors did not expect that to happen any time soon.

“We were at the point where we couldn’t get them here,” St. Landry Parish District Attorney Earl Taylor said. “… [so] we tried to do something to make them pay.”

Taylor said officials with Sportingbet approached his office about what could be done to resolve the pending legal case, which could have remained in limbo for several years. “They wanted to get the arrest warrants dismissed,” Taylor said.

He said the $400,000 - delivered by check Tuesday morning - will be shared by his office, State Police and the state Attorney General’s Office.

The District Attorney’s Office will use its share of the money to support programs to tackle Internet-related crimes, such as identity theft, child pornography and online gambling, Taylor said.

Opelousas attorney Leslie Schiff, local counsel for Sportingbet, confirmed the arrangement with District Attorney’s Office but had no further comment.

The dismissal of the gambling charges comes after Congress passed a law last year that curtailed Internet gambling by prohibiting the use of credit cards and electronic transfers to pay bets over the Internet.

Louisiana is one of only a handful of states that have banned online wagering, and the case against Sportingbet was one of the first since the practice was banned in 1997.

The case was launched in St. Landry Parish because it was worked by State Police investigators out of the Opelousas office.

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