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Gaming Guru
Top Vegas sports bettor, family to pay $4.2M forfeiture29 July 2015
His 83-year-old parents, Charles and Anna Cobb, and his stepdaughter Monica Namnard, 32, were allowed to walk out of court without probation or any supervision in the wake of their misdemeanor guilty pleas entered in April. But U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware ordered all four to share payment of a $4.2 million forfeiture to the government. Boulware also ordered Glen Cobb, 50, to allow probation officers to monitor his computers during his year of probation to ensure that he does not place illegal wagers with off-shore sports books. Cobb told Boulware the $4.2 million forfeiture judgment was plenty of incentive to refrain from dealing with the off-shore operations. Federal prosecutors sought to ban the family from entering casinos, arguing in court papers that to do otherwise would be like "letting the fox back into the hen house." But Boulware said it would take away the family's livelihood, and he refused to order it. Defense lawyers John Kinchen and Kathleen Bliss argued that offshore wagering was a very small portion of the family's betting operation and that most of it was done legally at Las Vegas casinos. Lycur, the now-defunct company that ran the betting operation, was also ordered to share in the forfeiture judgment. Lycur pleaded guilty to a felony charge of transmission of wagering information. The company was engaged in illegal betting with at least one offshore gambling site between March 2011 and December 2013, according to plea agreements. Boulware ordered the government to return $9 million of the $13.2 million it seized from the Cobb family during raids in 2013. The four family members all were initially charged with felonies, but those charges went away with the plea agreements. The Cobb investigation attracted public attention last year after a federal magistrate judge criticized secret government efforts to keep all of $13.2 million the IRS and Secret Service had seized. U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach issued a written decision ripping federal prosecutors for filing two civil forfeiture actions under a little-known procedure that gave no notice to the Cobbs or anyone else. Prosecutors abandoned the civil forfeiture efforts after the Cobbs were indicted and sought to keep the seized cash through the criminal proceedings. Recent Articles
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