Yesterday we reported that Chad Elie had pleaded guilty in court on Monday and today we want to share news with everyone that the final payment processor to be indicted on Black Friday pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday. John Campos was the last payment processor to plead guilty and he received one of the better plea deals by waiting until the end. The trial for Campos & Elie was set to start on April 9th 2012, but now both men have pleaded guilty in court to avoid the trial.
John Campos pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour banking charge and as part of the plea deal the federal sentencing guidelines say that Campos will receive 0-6 months in jail. The judge that is presiding over the case doesn’t have to follow the guidelines at sentencing although it’s expected that Campos won’t receive more than 12 months in jail at the maximum. Campos was a former co-owner of the SunFirst Bank in Utah and allegedly helped process millions of dollars for offshore poker websites.
Initially Campos and Elie were set to go to trial on April 9th because they felt they weren’t guilty. It was recently announced that federal prosecutors were going to use Daniel Tzvetkoff as a witness and he was going to testify at the trial. Elie and Campos decided that they would be better off taking a plea deal than going to trial it seems. Both alleged payment processors for online poker sites received lenient plea deals in court and there was no reason to risk going to trial in my opinion.
PokerStars SCOOP Schedule
In other news we wanted to briefly report that the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) schedule has been released with tentative dates. PokerStars is taking suggestions from players this year before they release the final schedule. The 1st event is schedule to begin on May 20th 2012, so you have nearly two months to prepare for the huge tournament series.
We’re going to release a full article on the PokerStars SCOOP 2012 schedule once the dates and events are finalized. There hasn’t been any mention of how much money is going to be guaranteed this year, but I expect the amount to be bigger than last year, as the guaranteed prize pools were smashed in most of the tournaments. Currently there are 38 events scheduled for this year at three different buy-in levels, which means there is currently a total of 114 tourneys on the 2012 PokerStars SCOOP schedule.
