Online gambling defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge

A Colorado man indicted by a grand jury on racketeering charges for allegedly running an online gambling operation pleaded guilty Wednesday to a lesser charge to avoid the consequences of his original grand jury indictment.

Larry Kyle Richardson (62) pleaded guilty to one count of gambling information, a Class 6 felony in which the defendant “knowingly transmits or receives gambling information by telephone, telegraph, radio, semaphore, or other means or knowingly installs or maintains equipment for the transmission or receipt of gambling information.”

Richardson is out of a $50,000 bond and will be sentenced in June this year. He was arrested by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in January on suspicion of running an online gambling website from Jan. 1, 2010, through Jan. 8, 2013, .

The grand jury indictment listed 195 instances in which search warrants executed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation obtained checks from suspected gamblers to Richardson in amounts ranging from $50 to $11,000.

The sum of the checks collected by the CBI totals almost $300,000.

Richardson’s fellow defendants in the case were Richard “Dick” Hancock, Teddy Mitchell, Gary Gibb, Dryden Mitchell and Roger “Dodger” Antablin.