New York City SENATE APPROVES ONLINE POKER EXPENSE DESPITE ZOMBIE WARNINGS


The New York state senate has actually approved an online poker costs for the first time, although poker’s primary supporter in the state Assembly declared previously in the day that he isn’t likely to move a companion step in the legislature s dying days at .

Late on Tuesday, following a genuinely interminable argument between S-5302 sponsor Sen. John Bonacic (visualized left) and  gambling challenger Sen. Liz Krueger (on the right), the complete senate voted 53-5 in favor on the bill’s passage. Bonacic’s success was that much sweeter given that Tuesday was his birthday.

While the extraordinary nature of the senate’s approval is laudatory, Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, who chairs the Assembly's racing and wagering committee, put cold water on the problem even prior to the senate started its dispute. The Buffalo News priced estimate Pretlaw saying that the push in the Assembly was dead.

The state is also battling with the issue of whether to legislate day-to-day dream sports, a problem that has significantly more juice than poker, and the legislature is set to adjourn on Thursday, so it appears online poker is just a cost too far.

Unwilling to let go, the Poker Players Alliance has actually insisted that there is still a legislative path toward online poker passage, particularly by inclusion in what New York lawmakers describe as the big awful, i.e. an eleventh hour, grab-bag omnibus package that collects mongrel bills like some Brooklyn dogcatcher.

THE ZOMBIES ARE COMING.

Krueger questioned Bonacic for a half-hour the only poll that asked any questions and her line of questions displayed her obvious bias aging  gambling. She also showed a shocking level of ignorance about gambling paired with an exceptional familiarity with Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling at Poker education.

Krueger claimed that she wasn’t instantly opposed against any of the state’s pending gaming bills; I just can’t find one I like. And tonight is no different. Krueger then downshifted into a strange tirade about how the web and mobile phones were turning Americans into addicts on our computer systems and living zombies.

Krueger appeared not to discover, but Bonacic discovered a way to avenge his aggravation with her significantly unhinged inquiries by responding with references to different sub-clauses in his legislation, helpfully labeling one example as D for Dense. Delighted birthday, John.


Caspersen’s Gambling Spiral Eliminated $113 Million in Weeks

Wall Street scion Andrew Caspersen had actually been gambling  since his very first year at Harvard Law School when it cost him his inheritance. By the time federal prosecutors caught up with him 10 weeks ago, the former lender fooled a charity out of nearly $25 million, part of a futile quote to recoup losses-- which in the end might have cost financiers $150 million

Caspersen’s lawyer informed reporters after a court hearing Tuesday that his customer was carried out in by a gambling mania that obliged him to lose 10’s of millions of dollars in choices trading and pursue new investors to recover capital. He’s negotiating a deal with district attorneys and will probably plead guilty to scams charges when he returns to court on July 6, said the lawyer, Paul Shechtman.

What began with sports gambling turned into a craze with Caspersen, 39, aggressively betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the outcome of motions in the S&P index, his lawyer said. On Feb. 11, Caspersen was flush with cash.


"It was practically as if he was gambling," stated Shechtman, describing his customer s trading. "He put all of it down on a  bet that the marketplace would go down. This is not a story of Wall Street greed," Shechtman said in an interview after court. "This is the story of a person tormented by his compulsiveness, who had a serious mental illness untreated till his arrest."

Charity Duped

Caspersen worked for PJT Partners Inc. up until he was fired March 28. The charitable foundation of hedge-fund billionaire Louis Bacon said he deceived it out of $24.6 million, while a financier at the fund lost another $400,000. Employing a "Ponzi-like plan," prosecutors said Tuesday that Caspersen defrauded lots of investors from at least $38.5 million and tried to solicit another $110 million more from victims.

Caspersen, who went from Princeton University to law school and after that Wall Street, appeared Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, where he pleaded innocent to securities scams and wire fraud charges, which each bring possible prison terms of as long as 20 years. His lawyer said Tuesday there’s nearly no defense to the charges by .

When asked by the judge whether Caspersen intends to plead guilty, Shechtman said I think that’s most likely. Nearly a certainty. The judge scheduled another hearing for July 6.

By the time he finished his first year at Harvard, Caspersen had actually currently lost his entire fortune --$20 million that he'd acquired from his family-- in casinos, according to Shechtman.

He made back millions of dollars through perks and Wall Street salary but pursued aggressive alternatives trading on the S&P index throughout his time at PJT Partners, the lawyer said. Dealing with countless dollars in installing losses beginning in about August 2014, Caspersen aimed to enhance his finances by getting his family and friends, obtaining them to put up about $38.5 million, Shechtman said. The victims consisted of the family members of Caspersen s late bride-to-be, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Shechtman said.

Caspersen's household history has victory and catastrophe. His dad, Finn M.W. Caspersen, ran the consumer-finance company Beneficial Corp. for almost 20 years, after his own father had overseen it for 18 years. In 1998, it was purchased out for more than $8 billion. His daddy committed suicide in 2009.

Bad Bet

His supreme failure came when he put a series of bad bets in mid-February that the S&P Index would fall. The index increased 6.1 percent from Feb. 12 to March 1.

"There’s no greed here, there was always intent to pay people back," Shechtman stated. "There was a pathological addiction here. He might have repaid them all back but the next day, he bet all of it away."

Prosecutors are also looking for financial penalties which Caspersen can’t pay, Shechtman stated, keeping in mind that his customer has actually sold his home in Bronxville, New York. "There s absolutely nothing left of Andrew s money, there’s no there. Nothing," the attorney stated.

Prior to moving in 2013 to Park Hill Group, then a part of private-equity huge Blackstone Group LP, Caspersen invested about 10 years at Coller Capital. Park Hill, which helps raise  capital for hedge funds, personal equity firms and secondary funds, was spun out by Blackstone and is now owned by Paul J. Taubman’s PJT Partners.

The case is U.S. v. Caspersen, 16-mj-2011, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).


Andrew Caspersen, Charged in $40 Million Fraud, Had Gambling Addiction, Lawyer States

Federal prosecutors claim that Andrew Caspersen ran a Ponzi-like plan to defraud buddies, household and a hedge fund foundation of nearly $40 million over 18-month duration.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Caspersen s lawyer contended that his customer, a previous Wall Street executive with an Ivy League pedigree, was the victim of an unmanageable gambling addiction that drove him for more than years. So grasping was Mr. Caspersen's dependency, the lawyer said, that he checked his phone throughout the day for updates on the stock market's instructions and his all in bearish bets that faced 10’s of millions of dollars.


Dressed in a black match and pink tie at his arraignment in a Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Caspersen, 39, informed a judge that he had been treated for compulsive gambling and mental health disease problems since his arrest in March.

The case of Mr. Caspersen, the son of a wealthy financier, Finn M. W. Caspersen, who committed suicide in 2009, has actually mesmerized Wall Street, in part because the scheme targeted pals, loved ones including his mom and a charitable foundation established by Louis M. Bacon, the billionaire financier and hedge fund manager, chief of .

Mr. Caspersen appeared on Tuesday before Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court and pleaded not guilty to a criminal file that included one count of securities scams and one count of wire scams. However, settlements have been occurring for a number of weeks, and he is expected to plead guilty at a July 7 hearing.

After the brief case, Mr. Caspersen’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman, described him as remorseful and relieved. Mr. Caspersen has been cast as a male of privilege who benefited from his social standing and professional position to sustain his trading addiction by playing .

He had every objective of paying everyone back, Mr. Shechtman said. This is a pathological gambling dependency.

Prior to his arrest, Mr. Caspersen was seen as an effective Wall Street executive with the right credentials and pedigree. He had actually gone to the Groton School, Princeton and Harvard Law School, and had actually gone on to become an executive at the Park Hill Group, a department of PJT Partners.

Mr. Caspersen leveraged his Ivy League connections and credibility to undertake exactly what the authorities have called a brazen scheme to look for to defraud investors from tens of countless dollars.

On Tuesday, Mr. Shechtman described Mr. Caspersen’s addiction as having actually started with casino gambling and sports betting, and quickly becoming banking on the stock market while he was a student at Harvard Law. Mr. Caspersen’s father and brothers all attended Harvard, where a student center at the law school is named for the household.

Over the last years, Mr. Caspersen squandered more than $20 countless his own money, consisting of a family inheritance, Mr. Shechtman stated, adding that Mr. Caspersen and his better half, Christina, were basically broke and were selling their multimillion-dollar Bronxville, N.Y., home.

Mr. Caspersen’s trading method was not particularly sophisticated. He almost solely traded one-week put options betting  on a decrease in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Exactly what was amazing was the bold nature of the bets, where Mr. Caspersen would advise his broker to trade all the cash offered in his account every week, his lawyer stated.

As just recently as Feb. 11, Mr. Caspersen had $112.8 million in a brokerage account and might have easily paid back the $38.5 million he had actually owed family and friends. Rather, the extremely next trading day he purchased his broker, at an unnamed Wall Street firm, to position a brand-new round of all-in bets that the marketplace would fall that week. Stay tuned with  to check reviews of right marketplace.

As stocks increased earlier this year and the market turned versus him, Mr. Caspersen lost all the money in exactly what the government described as aggressive bearish alternatives trades. By March 9, his account had dwindled to $3.35 million. On March 26, he was apprehended after representatives from Mr. Bacon s foundation became suspicious when he would not return their money, and they reached out to federal authorities.

Mr. Caspersen even took about $1 million from the household of a long time sweetheart, Catherine F. MacRae, who died on Sept. 11, 2001, during the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, his lawyer stated on Tuesday. Together with Ms. MacRae’s family, Mr. Caspersen had produced a memorial fund to benefit education programs for children from low-income families. The lawyer said the  money in the scheme was not from that fund.

Mr. Caspersen has actually likewise been accused of benefiting from a college schoolmate at Princeton University who worked for Mr. Bacon s firm. The friend, James McIntyre, invested $400,000 of his own money in Mr. Caspersen's scheme and also Okayed for a charitable trust connected with Moore Capital to invest near to $25 million.

Prosecutors working for Preet Bharara, the Manhattan United States lawyer, included more information on Tuesday to the criminal complaint they submitted in March.

The authorities now state that Mr. Caspersen had actually sought to defraud financiers out of $150 million, up from the $95 million pointed out in the criminal grievance. The new criminal filing said he used a few of the money he raised to make routine interest payments to earlier financiers.

Mr. Caspersen promised financiers a yearly return of 15 to 20 percent by putting up money that he said would be used making safe loans to personal equity firms, the authorities said.

In all, district attorneys stated he utilized 5 fictitious investment cars to raise money to perform the plan. They said he likewise doctored files and comprised a worker at one doubleu casino free chips firm as part of his bluff when he was questioned by investors.

An internal examination by PJT Partners concluded that the quantity of money Mr. Caspersen in fact took in from investors in the last 2 years had to do with $40 million, of which $14 million originated from good friends and relatives, including his mother, Barbara Caspersen.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a related civil fraud problem against him.

Mr. Shechtman stated news media reports have actually mistakenly defined his customer as a guy driven by greed and self-interest.

This is not about Wall Street greed, he said. This is about dependency and mental illness.