Party's Over For PartyGaming Founder
Anurag Dikshit, a founder and former executive at PartyGaming, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court Tuesday to illegal Internet gambling and agreed to cooperate with the U.S. law enforcement officials in an investigation of the Gibraltar-based online gaming company. He entered the plea to one count of online gambling in violation of the Wire Act and will forfeit $300 million, the Justice Department said. Dikshit, 37, faces up to two years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense.
From about 1997 through October 2006, PartyGaming operated a business that offered casino and poker games, among other games of chance, to customers around the world, including to individuals in the United States. During that time a majority of PartyGaming's users -- accounting for roughly 85 percent of PartyGaming's revenue in 2005 -- were located in the United States. Dikshit developed a proprietary software platform for PartyGaming, directed the firm's IT operations and was a principal shareholder for much of the time period.
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