back to article Internet gambling mogul surrenders $300m in guilty plea

An internet tycoon who made billions of dollars building an online gambling empire has agreed to forfeit $300m after pleading guilty to violating the US Wire Act. Anurag Dikshit, co-founder of Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, entered the plea Tuesday in US District Court in Manhattan. A lawyer for Dikshit told US District Judge …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Jared Earle
    Coat

    Dikshit?

    Seriously? Dikshit?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Dikshit?

    No further comment, m'lud.

  3. Long Fei
    Alert

    Dikshit?

    That is a most unfortunate name!

  4. Alan Dougherty

    *cough*smirk*

    I caught this news on the Beeb first, and immediatly ran over here to see if there where any comments.. for the obvious reason of the above posts :)

    Does this guy get laughed at every time he boards a plane?

  5. theotherone
    Go

    doen't matter

    doesn't matter if your name is dickshit or dipshit, if you've got the billions then the joke is most definitely on everyone else but you!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Dan Goodin?

    Seriously a name that silly has to be made up and if it is, then it is bordering on the unprintably offensive and you should be ashamed.

    Next thing you know, the kids on the playground will be calling each other "Dan Goodin" just because those clever diks at The Register managed to slip it past the censors. God forbid that there is actually some poor girl who has to bear the name "Dan Goodin". If she wasn't already mortally embarrassed she certainly is now.

    Regardless, we are all diminished by your clumsy wit. Dangoodin to you, you thrice-blighted, marmot-worrying, axminsterophilic, clan of raging dangoodinites!

  7. Henry Wertz Gold badge
    Linux

    The fine...

    Yeah really, what kind of name is that? Dutch or something?

    I like the $250,000 fine they throw on there, after paying $300,000,000 8-). (Well, actually I don't, I don't think online gambling should be illegal. But anyway.)

  8. Dalen
    Paris Hilton

    Dikshit?

    Did someone miss a 'c' when typing the article up?

    Paris, because... well, that's really self-explanatory.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    We get whatever Christmas we deserve

    Well, Dunno about D**Shit, but Sh**ForBrains - definitely. Only a mentally deficient person will try to enter the USA after doing something which yanks classify as a federal offence. He is getting whatever Christmas he asked for.

  10. alzain
    Happy

    WHAT A NAME

    dikshit???

    sounds wrong man.just wrong

  11. Kevin Thomas
    Coat

    Never mind...

    Dikshit, what about the judge! Surely that's got to be a spoonerism :)

  12. Erix

    Dickshit...

    ...sounds like that NZ electronic chain. Then again, Hundscheidt would have been so much more subtle (the Dutch do have some nice names to go for them)

  13. Paul Rogers
    Coat

    Arf! Dikshit? Rakoff?

    this is made up right? <checks date>

  14. Nick Hill
    Pirate

    Plane

    When I lived in Gibraltar (correct spelling) I met him, he's a nice chap and he doesn't need to worry about people laughing.

    He (well did) has a lot of money and has his own plane......

    Always thought these laws were there to protect the US gambling companies not the US citizens...

  15. pastamasta
    Coat

    Anurag?

    'Nuff said.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Yes, Dikshit is his real name

    And his co-conspirator is called Ruth Parasol. Which I suppose is handy when there's shit flying.

    (Freudian aside:- when I first typed his name, it came out as 'Diskshit'. The article I was reading before this one was about IBM. I don't know if that means anything.)

  17. Steve

    US == China

    Would there be any difference if instead of the US prosecuting a foreign national for providing a legal (in his jurisdiction) service, it was the Chinese prosecuting (for example) a US Journalist who'd published something about Tibetan independance which happened to be available to the Chinese.

  18. alain williams Silver badge

    USA protectionism

    Don't forget that what this is about is the USA stopping money flowing overseas through gambling. The ban was announced illegal by the WTO and sued by Antigua - but a little thing like illegality doesn't stop a big bully country like the USA from doing what it wants.

  19. James Condron

    Wait a sec...

    An Indian national, UK/Gibraltar based company, and yet picked up by the merkins? Thats bollocks, that is.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Will be getting more on it in prison.

    Could''ve used some of his money to change his name. Or at least spell it differently - Dixit - like the actress - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dikshit

    A name purportedly given to descendants of Alexander the Great's army - also someone notable for getting 'xit' on his dick.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Shitty American protectionism strikes again!

    Well done USA, land of the free, where you can't even gamble online.

    Because those gambling dollars are only good when they flow into Vegas.

  22. Frostbite
    IT Angle

    Dikshit

    I bet his teachers were always calling him in class to riotous laughter from the others.

    IT? becasue it's in his name.

  23. Jeremy
    Paris Hilton

    Stupid prat...

    Why the hell did he think it was a good idea to land in the USA after doing something high-profile and illegal there? If he was a John Smith, he might have gotten away with it but Dikshit? Like the Feds were gonna miss that one. Idiot.

    <~~ Because...

  24. Tony

    Wait... What?

    Surely if gambling is illegal in the states where these people were playing then the crime is being committed by the individual in that state that is placing the bets, not the site that is running a perfectly legal internet business?

    By this logic if (for example) someone in the UK accesses images from a US site that contravene the new 'extreme porn laws' but are perfectly legal in the US then we can extradite US citizens to the UK and force them to stand trial for failing to police our internet users for us? Yeah... Right.

    Why the hell do we not tell the yanks to get stuffed (I'm being polite here). They do NOT own the internet whatever they may think.

  25. Dale

    Serious comments

    Frankly, I'm surprised there are any serious comments in here at all. I for one couldn't get beyond the name. Don't know or care what the article was about.

  26. Chris C

    Protectionism -- yes and no

    For those crying "USA protectionism", you are both right and wrong. This federal law has nothing to do about "protecting" US corporations. If you had a clue, you'd realize there are very few US gambling casinos, and they are grouped in very few locations (Atlantic City, Vegas, Reno, etc). No, the real protectionism is about two things -- horse racing (which is explicitly excluded from the Wire Act) and state-sponsored gambling (states' scratch tickets, Keno, etc).

    Let me repeat part of that because it bears repeating -- horse racing is the ONLY kind of gambling which the Wire Act allows across state lines. So yes, it's most definitely US protectionism. But not in the way you imagine.

    Having said all that, my opinion is that if people want to gamble, let them gamble. But don't even think of allowing them to use government-funded assistance when they lose everything. it is not, I repeat, NOT any establishment's obligation (be it a casino, bar/pub/tavern, etc) to parent/police an individual. It is the individual's obligation to accept personal responsibility for their actions.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Gotta love this-make billions,

    fine millions. Massive profit. Zero deterrence. That's the real crime here.

    and for you wankers going off about protectionism-we've sacrificed our industries, our technologies to allow your economies to benefit, gave you billions in tariff-free trade for decades while paying your tariffs and pricing ourselves out of your markets. Blow it out your arse.

    Funny how eurotrash bitch about people using the internet to avoid VAT and other taxes, using the internet to commit acts that are illegal in Europe, but America, we're not supposed to enforce our own laws and must allow every bit of sewage the world wants to send in across the internet, or we're "bullies".

    We'll make you a deal. We'll allow your unregulated, unmonitored international money laundering (gambling) and you allow all your repressed citizens to mail order all the guns they want.

  28. Ian Michael Gumby
    Pirate

    Just FYI...

    I believe he was caught while visiting in the states. So he actually did himself in.

    300m on Billions? Not a bad way to get out of a sticky situation.

    Its not an issue of "protectionism" since US corps can't do online gaming themselves. Its a case of the "Moral Majority" (which is a minority) has influenced government policy which is akin to prohibition.

  29. BioTube

    Gambling

    The federal government has the authority to regulate any interstate or international commerce. As for the WTO deal, what's the point of being powerful if you can't throw your weight around once in a while? Besides, it applies to internal businesses as well, so it's not protectionism(physical gambling doesn't cross state lines, so the fed can't regulate it).

  30. kain preacher

    Um folks

    Online gambling is illegal in the US period. no mater were you are at.

  31. Roger Heathcote
    Flame

    Listen up yank!...

    This is where your country has got it so very wrong. Anyone who hasn't (yet) murdered anyone can walk into a shop and buy an M16 assault rifle _yet_ having a game of cards over the internet is illegal!

    Do you really think that guns can protect you from an oppressive government when you don't even have the freedom to gamble _your_ money and half the time you can't get into a bar without an ID card? I'm living in New York (temporary, can't be helped!) which is one of your more liberal cities, and I'm telling you now you are not even nearly as free as us 'eurotrash'.

    What is more, you _are_ bullies as the entire rest of the world will attest. You no doubt will disagree or claim you have a god given right to do what you want internationally, whatever, I'm just telling it how the other 94.9% of the world sees it.

    And don't give me this "we've sacrificed our industries, our technologies to allow your economies to benefit" rubbish, no you fucking haven't! Nobody made you buy any of 'our' stuff, or don't they teach you about capitalism in American schools?!

    People pay what a thing is worth to them. You benefit from receiving goods just as I benefit from selling them and vice versa. It doesn't matter two shits to you if 'we' double tariffs or half them, the only people we could harm in anything approximating a free market would be ourselves. Honestly it's not 1750 anymore, we don't have an empire or a monopoly on shipping or cotton or slaves so, for as long as you or I have been alive we have both had the same 3 options...

    1) Pay the asking price

    2) Don't buy the stuff

    3) Turn to any other number of suppliers.

    Now please explain in detail how that equates to you sacrificing dick all?! If your economies in the shit it's YOU OWN FAULT buddy. Honestly, making out it's down to your sheer altruism? The vanity!

    Roger.

    PS: Anonymous coward - quite.

  32. cornz

    Thats an unfortunate name, but...

    aint a patch on one Mr. Randy Bumgardner.

  33. kain preacher

    @Roger Heathcot

    anyone can walk into a shop and buy an M16 assault rifle _yet_ having a game of cards over the internet is illegal!

    Really m16 is full auto, try buying that in NY, oh yeah try buy an AR15 in California. Oops you cant.

    Thanks for playing .

This topic is closed for new posts.