Orlando, Florida - U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron has sentenced David H. Stewart (65, Holly Hill) to three years, five months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. As part of his sentence, the Court also entered a money judgment in the amount of $323,636, the proceeds of his criminal conduct, and ordered the forfeiture of his interest in a parcel of real property.
Stewart pleaded guilty on June 28, 2016.
According to court documents, Stewart conspired with Jason Neiman and others to defraud financial institutions and a credit card processor into processing illegal Internet gambling payments for offshore Internet gambling businesses. Stewart duped the financial institutions into processing the Internet gambling payments by disguising the transactions as payments for Internet television and movie subscriptions from DiamondPayTV, a phony Internet merchant. Stewart funneled the illegal gambling proceeds through business bank accounts that he opened in the names of shell companies and transferred the funds to overseas accounts controlled by the Internet casinos. He also lied to bank officials about the nature of these businesses to convince them to open the accounts. During a one-year period, the conspirators processed over 59,000 credit card transactions for illegal Internet gambling, totaling about $4.2 million.
This case was investigated by the Saint Cloud Internal Revenue Service-Secret Service Financial Crimes Task Force, a task force comprised of the following federal, state and local law enforcement agencies: Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation; United States Secret Service; Saint Cloud Police Department; Osceola County Sheriff’s Office; Brevard County Sheriff’s Office; Palm Bay Police Department; Casselberry Police Department; Kissimmee Police Department; Winter Park Police Department; and the Maitland Police Department. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Karen L. Gable.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
