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Why wasn't telemarketing fraudster Jeremy Johnson charged with Black Friday related offenses?
Very interesting story coming out, mostly as a result of Chad Elie's appearance on Twitter.
In case you missed the Elie thing, it's described here: http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...r-defends-self
Anyway, it was reported in February, 2011 -- just two months before Black Friday -- that notorious telemarketing scammer Jeremy Johnson lost a LOT of money in both Las Vegas and playing poker online.
That article is here: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011...ions-las-vega/
Here is Jeremy Johnson, about to take a helicopter ride with Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who apparently became his good friend:
http://www.flushdraw.net/wp-content/...hnson_heli.jpg
Johnson is the redhead.
Anyway, Full Tilt confirmed at the time that Jeremy Johnson played on the site as "ginette22", and lost about $1.5 million. Here is a PTR screen shot, showing him down about a million:
Johnson's telemarketing scam was massive. It resulted in $275 million of stolen money. Notice this line from the story:
Quote:
The FTC claims Johnson and his companies including I Works and Elite Debit scammed consumers out of $275 million by luring them into obtaining trial memberships for bogus services and then repeatedly charging their credit and debit cards monthly fees for the worthless services.
Notice the company name "Elite Debit". I'll get to that shortly.
Read this great article about Chad Elie and Jeremy Johnson, written by investigative poker journalist Haley Hintze: http://www.flushdraw.net/news/chad-e...er-appearance/
Turns out that Jeremy Johnson and Chad Elie were working together, and Elite Debit was their jointly-owned company.
From the Haley Hintze article:
Quote:
Speaking of those online-marketing symposiums which are often held in Las Vegas, Elie attended one in 2009, where he was introduced by mutual friends to Jeremy Johnson, who at that moment in time was recognized as a telelmarketing giant. Elie had a major client in PokerStars and was searching for banks to help with processing, and Johnson had a secret connection at a bank, the doomed SunFirst Bank in St. George, Utah, at the heart of most of the Black Friday allegations.
The two grew serious about business possibilities in 2009, and in October of that year, started a company together called Elite Debit, with two businessmen closely linked to Johnson, Jason and Todd Vowell, serving as the company’s managers and other Johnson associates in supporting roles. Elie supplied PokerStars as a client, with Full Tilt coming on board in 2010. Johnson and his friends supplied the bank, and the two sides were to split the profit 50/50.
So basically it went like this:
Elie met Johnson at a conference, and both had something to offer the other. Elie had his poker site connections (Pokerstars, Full Tilt), and Johnson had his connections at Sun First Bank.
This partnership allowed the two of them to hook up Stars and Full Tilt with Sun First for payment processing, which ultimately led to the Black Friday busts in April, 2011.
John Campos, a VP at Sun First, was charged on Black Friday, and ultimately pled guilty to accepting bribes.
Guess who the bribe came from?
It was allegedly Jeremy Johnson.
Why was Johnson never charged? Haley Hintze believes it was a "territorial dispute" between the DOJ and FTC, where both wanted the bust, neither wanted to cooperate with the other, and Johnson somehow slipped away -- at least from Black Friday.
It is not clear how Campos could have been charged with accepting a bribe, yet the person caught bribing him wasn't charged. This is especially curious since it's not like Johnson's character is beyond reproach. He is a 9-figure telemarketing scammer!
I'll post more on this as I find out more information.
