According to reports, two more defendants in the alleged Russian mob gambling ring that was busted up in April will plead guilty next month, bringing the number of plea deals reached to five in the case.
The New York Daily News is reporting that, on September 4, plea deals will be submitted for Edwin Ting and poker professional Justin ‘BoostedJ’ Smith in federal court. The Daily News reports that Smith, who has earned over $2.1 million on the tournament poker circuit since 2008 and was a terror in online poker, will plead guilty to taking payments for internet gambling. In his plea, Ting will confess to operating an illegal gambling business. Both men are facing the potential for up to five years in prison, but it is expected that the sentences will not be that severe under the plea deals.
These two plea agreements follow up two other deals reached over the past two weeks. On August 16, William Barbalat and Kirill Rapoport pled guilty to their roles in the alleged ring and face the same five years in jail that Smith and Ting will. Barbalat and Rapoport pled guilty to traveling in interstate commerce in aid of an unlawful activity and conducting an illegal gambling business. That business was running illegal poker games, according to reports, from 2010 through 2013.
“For three years, William Barbalat and Kirill Rapoport oversaw illegal gambling enterprises in the Southern District of New York,” U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated at the time. “With their pleas, we move closer to holding to account all those who participated in this wide-ranging network of criminal conduct linked to organized crime.”
What isn’t being said in any reports is if those who have reached plea deals (in July, Hollywood producer Bryan Zuriff pled guilty to his role in the operation and lost his job as producer of the Showtime series “Ray Donovan”) will be offering any information on the alleged ring. Normally when a plea deal is reached, those defendants who are involved will sometimes offer information about those who were “higher up” in the operation in exchange for leniency. In this case, those “higher up” are quite notorious.
Still at large among the 34 people originally charged in the case is Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, who is alleged to be a major figure in the Russian crime syndicate. Tokhtakhunov is alleged to not only have been a major player in this case but also has been alleged to bribe officials during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games that were held in Salt Lake City.
Several top professionals in the world of poker were also charged in the April indictment, although the status of their cases isn’t known at this time. Bill Edler, Peter Feldman, John Hanson and Abe Mosseri face a variety of charges that include racketeering, extortion, money laundering and illegal gambling. One of the “notable” names that also appeared on the indictment in April was that of Molly Bloom, who made her name in organizing poker games for Hollywood’s elite, businessmen and poker professionals in both California and New York.
It is poker professional Vadim Trincher, however, who faces perhaps the biggest charges of all. Trincher is alleged to have been one of the ringleaders of the operation that funneled money through bank accounts in Cyprus, the United States and Russia. Along with his son, Illya, and the son of a prominent art dealer in New York, these three men (along with Tokhtakhunov) allegedly laundered over $50 million in the operation before they were arrested as a result of the indictments.
With 29 figures still left in the massive case, there will probably be many more plea deals reached before all is said and done. Bloom has already pled not guilty to the charges facing her and trials for those who don’t reach plea deals are expected to begin in the spring of 2014.
