District Attorney's Office says Internet gambling charges against an executive with a British company have been dismissed in exchange for $400,000 after extradition issues left the case nearly impossible to prosecute.
State police, working with Saint Landry prosecutors, had secured warrants in May in an investigation that focused on Sportingbet P-L-C, a company that operates out of England, where online gambling is legal.
The company's former chairman, Peter Dicks, was arrested on a Louisiana warrant in September in New York.
But Dicks was freed because New York law allows extradition only when the accused was physically present in the state where the alleged crime was committed.
Dicks could have been arrested had he set foot in Louisiana, but prosecutors did not expect that to happen any time soon.
The dismissal of the gambling charges comes after Congress passed a law last year that curtailed Internet gambling by prohibiting the use of credit cards and electronic transfers to pay bets over the Internet.
Louisiana is one of only a handful of states that have banned online wagering, and the case against Sportingbet was one of the first since the practice was banned in 1997.
District Attorney's Office says Internet gambling charges against an executive with a British company have been dismissed in exchange for $400,000 after extradition issues left the case nearly impossible to prosecute.