Maryland Online Gambling Investigation Seizes Emails

By Van Smith, Baltimore City Paper

Electracash, Inc., the California payment-processor whose bank accounts were seized in July by federal investigators in Maryland who are probing the online gambling industry, has been targeted again. This time, the Feds are going after evidence of gambling-related communications in Electracash's e-mail account with New York-based Intermedia. Electracash's chief executive officer, D. Lee Falls, did not return a phone message seeking comment.

The latest seizure warrant was signed by U.S. District Court magistrate judge James Bredar on Oct. 9, and was entered yesterday on the federal courts on-line database, PACER. Like prior bank-account seizure warrants in the investigation, the sworn affidavit supporting the e-mail seizure is sealed.

The investigator who applied for the e-mail warrant, Richard S. Gunn, is an Anne Arundel County police detective and task-force officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Gunn was the affiant in August seizures of Forshay Enterprises bank accounts. Forshay, like Electracash, is in the payment-processing business, as is HMD, Inc., whose bank accounts also were seized in August.

IRS criminal investigator Randall Carrow, in a 2008 affidavit, said Electracash was owned Edward Courdy, who along with Michael Garone was charged with money-laundering last year. Courdy and Garone appear to be the only defendants charged in the investigation, and neither has been called to appear in court to answer to the charges, which were filed in July 2008. The U.S. government filed forfeiture proceedings last year to keep nearly $10 million seized from Courdy and more than $14,000,000 seized from Garone. Earlier this year, Courdy was granted the return of $200,000 of his seized funds, though the government has kept all of Garone's funds.

Source: www.gambling911.com