PokerStars’ Isai Scheinberg pleads guilty to Black Friday charge

PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg has pled guilty to illegal gambling in a New York court, setting up the end of the nearly decade-long Black Friday saga.

On Wednesday, Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Scheinberg had entered a plea of guilty to a single count of operating an illegal gambling business. Scheinberg faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison when he’s sentenced later by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan at a later date.

In January, news broke that the 73-year-old Scheinberg had surrendered to US authorities after being arrested in Switzerland last June. Scheinberg initially chose to fight extradition before agreeing to come to New York to face the music.

Scheinberg’s plea comes nearly nine years after he was indicted on federal charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering related to the April 15, 2011 online poker crackdown by US authorities. Scheinberg told the court that he knew PokerStars was operating in defiance of US law but opted to continue operating his insanely profitable business (for some unstated and inexplicable reason).