A Chicago man is in trouble big time with the feds. Michael Frontier, or Ira Goldberg or any of the long list of other aliases he has used, is charged with running an illegal sportsbook based out of Costa Rica. He was indicted last Thursday and has a lot of complaints against him, which ultimately means he shouldn’t plan on spending too much time as a free man for probably the next 30-40 years.
According to the Chicago Sun Times, 35-year-old Frontier has been indicted for opening gambling accounts for individuals at on online sportsbook operating out of the Central American country from at least 2010-2016. He collected wagers and paid out winnings and is looking at five counts of money laundering, one count of conducting an illegal gambling business, five counts of making a false statement in a bankruptcy case, two counts of bankruptcy fraud and one count of making a false declaration to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
The bankruptcy charges stem from a separate incident that saw Frontier believe he could pull one over on Uncle Sam and government investigators. He was able to convince a bankruptcy judge to discharge all his debts, including a civil judgment in the amount of $1.5 million against him for causing a motorcycle accident, but karma came back to bite him. That judgment reportedly came after an unidentified man crashed the bike soon after Frontier had, in theory, repaired it.
That court case took place while he was running his illegal gambling operation, which means he was earning an income – albeit illegal – while declaring bankruptcy. However, Frontier, who has also used the name Brian Seagal and Matthew Sullivan, according to prosecutors, was more well off than he had made it seem.
He’s now looking at a total of 14 charges and will have plenty of time to figure out where he may have gone wrong. The money-laundering charges alone carry a maximum sentence of 20 years apiece and the others can be punishable by up to five years. It’s highly doubtful a judge will throw the whole lot at him, but it’s a safe bet that he’s going to have several long concurrent sentences handed down. His arraignment has not yet been put on the books.
