The price of cooperation

Canadian e-cash processor Douglas Rennick (35) appeared to have escaped with a remarkably light sentence in a New York federal court this week, being handed a six month probation by U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein despite the offences for which he was convicted carrying potentially heavy prison sentences.
Of course, there is also the matter of the $17.1 million the processor is obliged to pay over to the feds, and there has inevitably been speculation that an element of the lenient quid pro quo is assisting the authorities in further investigations.
Rennick entered a guilty plea at his trial on May 11, but the judge withheld sentencing until September 15 on charges of money laundering, which were rooted in processing deals that allegedly involved activity for Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker.
When asked to describe his crime by Judge Stein in May, Rennick replied: “I had a business that transferred money from offshore gaming sites to American players within the Southern District of New York.”
Rennick was busted in August 2009 on accusations that he processed around $350 million for online gambling companies over a two year period. He was also accused of providing false and misleading information to US banks so as to disguise the gambling related nature of the transactions, which would not have otherwise been authorised by the banks.
The initial charges carried scary punitive consequences – up to 55 years in prison, millions in fines and the forfeiture of an alleged $566 million, but these were reduced as the case developed, leading to the present sentence.

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