Friday, March 23, 2007

The Saint Landry Parish District Attorney's Office says Internet gambling
charges against an executive with a British company have been dismissed in
exchange for 400,000 dollars after extradition issues left the case nearly
impossible to prosecute. State police, working with Saint Landry
prosecutors, had secure 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 a Louisiana warrant in September in New York. But Dicks was freed because
New York law allows extradition only when the accused was 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. 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.