Sports bettor Glen Cobb, his stepdaughter, and his 82-year-old parents pleaded guilty on Monday in a long-running investigation of a multi-million dollar illegal sports betting operation.
IRS agents had been investigating the Cobbs since 2002 but the investigation first hit the courts after a raid in December 2013, during which agents seized $10.5m from Cobbs’ investment and bank accounts, along with computers, cellphones, hard drives, and other properties and $2.7 million from Glenn Cobbs’s home.
The four defendants have been indicted of running the illegal bookmaking operation from March 2011 through December 2013 and unlawfully organizing cash transactions through Nevada casinos between December 2008 and November 2013.
The Cobbs were also charged of structuring financial transactions to hide $2.6 million from the IRS—$1.4 million at the Mirage, $503,303 at the LVH resort, $199,500 at The Venetian, $183, 500 at the South Point and $79,350 at the Fremont and $256,136 at Bank of America—but those charges were dropped as part of the plea deals.
The case attracted public attention after Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach issued a written decision blasting the government’s use of the courts in the undercover forfeiture campaign.
Last week, Glen Cobb agreed to plead guilty to two counts of the misdemeanor accessory after the fact to the crime of transmission of wagering information. His parents Charles and Anna Cobb and step-daughter Monica Namnard each pleaded guilty to one count of the gambling misdemeanor.
Lycur—the Cobbs company that ran the illegal betting operation and placed bets across state and international lines on www.betgrande.com—pleaded guilty to a felony charge of transmission of wagering information.
The family has agreed to forfeit the $4.2 million proceeds from the illegal gambling activities of Lycur between 2011 and 2013. The government will return approximately $9 million in cash to Cobb family, minus the amount owed to the IRS or other government agencies.
