Sonny Vleisides is associated with BFL and it's the same Sonny listed in the case documents. He was involved in off shore gaming in the capacity of selling and providing software engineering to companies that did the actual offshore gaming (there is even a US patent application for the process). The industry came under attack (as we all remember) around that time, and Mr. Vleisides was caught up in the process as well as a good portion of the industry based in Costa Rica.
Although this may be cause for concern to some, the fact is that we're a robust company with 22 employees. One of them has a colorful background in offshore libertarianism.
Offshore gaming and libertarianism? I would love to hear more about this, since the news report from the US Postal Inspector sounds a little more like a Ponzi than Sonny and his group providing access to foreign lotteries or running a poker room.
According to the indictment the victims were purchasing positions in tickets for lotteries that would be grouped together or pooled to buy larger blocks of tickets thereby increasing their chances of winning. Funds received from victims were not used to purchase tickets, but to pay winnings to other victims, to fund the scheme and to benefit the defendants. Victims were sent checks falsely represented as lottery winnings, however the amount of the alleged winnings was far less than the amount the victim had sent in.
The indictment alleges that over one million solicitations were sent throughout the United States, offering chances of winning foreign and domestic lotteries such as The Australian Lottery, The International Irish Sweepstakes, The El Gordo, and others. The solicitation packet contained envelopes preaddressed to mail drops in the Netherlands, Ireland and other international locations under the control of the defendants. The defendants established numerous bank accounts in names which sounded similar to official lotteries like Shamrock Agency, World Expert, Old Amsterdam, and German Swiss.