Chicago bookie sentenced

[Patrickgold]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/cri ... story.html

[Patrickgold]

North Shore butcher sentenced to a year in prison in sports betting scheme

A North Shore butcher was sentenced Monday to a year in federal prison for running an illegal sports bookmaking operation that raked in millions of dollars that he used to fund real estate investments, car purchases and his family’s popular wrestling gym.
Domenic Poeta, 63, who for years has run Poeta’s Italian Food Mart in Highwood, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count each of illegal bookmaking and filing a false tax return.
Poeta admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that from 2014 to 2018, he used offshore betting websites based in the Caribbean to process millions of dollars in sports wagers and did not report the income on his tax returns. In all, Poeta has agreed to repay more than $1.4 million in lost tax revenue.
In rejecting Poeta’s request for probation or home confinement, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said the length and breadth of the scheme was enormous and “quite likely an undercount by a significant amount.”

“It’s breathtaking, quite honestly,” Kennelly said.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, Kennelly put off the date Poeta must report to prison until May 29, saying “things should be significantly better by then.”
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of up to about three years behind bars, saying Poeta’s operation victimized addicted gamblers who burned though personal finances and in some cases took out high-interest cash loans from credit cards because of their mounting debts.
One bettor who frequently used Poeta’s bookie services embezzled millions of dollars from his family’s chain of restaurants to keep up with payments, resulting in the loss of the business, according to prosecutors.

To help keep bettors coming back, Poeta also set up a lending operation where he gave high-interest loans to people who owed him money.
In May 2018, Poeta told investigators he’d lent approximately $250,000 over the previous decade to “two degenerate gamblers who owned a restaurant,” charging them 20% interest, according to a prosecution filing in September.
Over the five years of the charged scheme, Poeta reported only about $50,000 in taxable income from his butcher business and paid only about $7,000 in federal income taxes, according to prosecutors.
During those same years, Poeta’s personal expenditures exceeded $4.7 million, including more than $1 million in mortgage payments, $800,000 in futures and commodities investments, $620,000 in real estate acquisitions, $514,000 for the family wrestling gym in Lake Forest, and payments for three different vehicles, prosecutors said.

In asking for a term of probation or home confinement, Poeta’s attorney, Thomas Breen, said his client’s advanced age and health concerns put him at increased risk for COVID-19 infection in prison.
Citing the dozens of letters of support sent by relatives, customers and others, Breen said Poeta, who immigrated to the United States at age 5 from his hometown of Tottea, Italy, is an important member of the North Shore community and has spent a lifetime helping others.
Breen also said Poeta “is making a commitment” to getting out of the sports gambling business, one that is now sanctioned by governments across the United States, including in Illinois.
“Apparently, the morality issues of gambling have been resolved in favor of tax revenue for the states and federal government,” Breen said in a sentencing filing earlier this year.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick King said Poeta’s black market operation was a far cry from the now-legalized sports gambling world where taxes are paid and money must be laid down upfront.
“(Poeta) allows people to wager money that they do not have. He allows wagers on credit,” King said during Monday’s 45-minute hearing.
Before he was sentenced, Poeta, appearing via a video link, apologized for his actions and asked for a sentence that would allow him to keep taking care of people, including his cancer-stricken brother, and pay down what he owes.
“There’s a lot of people that I think need me,” said Poeta, of Highland Park. “I just want to do the right thing and just pay my debt.”
The case against Poeta was not the first time he appeared in federal court in connection with gambling allegations.
In 2008, he was accused in a civil case by the feds of being a bookie who accepted $647,211 in checks for gambling debts.
The judge at that time ruled that Poeta had to pay all the money back to the government for accepting bets by Adam Resnick, who was convicted of embezzling millions from the Chicago bank where he worked to fund his insatiable gambling.
Kennelly said Monday that despite the publicity in that case, “Mr. Poeta’s involvement in bookmaking … didn’t slow down or stop or anything close to that.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
© 2020 Chicago Tribune

[cavita]

He had to have some leg breakers to keep those high bettors from paying.

[cavita]

He had to have some leg breakers to keep those high bettors from paying.

*always paying

[SonnyBlackstein]

No one to blame but himself. $5mil in expenditures and claims a $50k income. Jeezus. How fucking stupid are these people. He claims $500k income, pays $250k to the G and he keeps his 5mill. Unbelievable how stupid people come across money.


Thanks for the post.

[Tonyd621]

No one to blame but himself. $5mil in expenditures and claims a $50k income. Jeezus. How fucking stupid are these people. He claims $500k income, pays $250k to the G and he keeps his 5mill. Unbelievable how stupid people come across money.


Thanks for the post.

You think this guy is a seasoned pro at this, money laundering yrs before, bookmaking his whole life, probably. You think maybe the article is leaving something out about how he tried to hid his assets; it makes no sense to me either.

[Patrickgold]

He had to have some leg breakers to keep those high bettors from paying.

Definitely a big time operation. Heard he was on good terms with Solly D

[Tonyd621]

The risk vs reward sounds worth it to me with the money he made