The breaking news out of the bitcoin gambling world this morning is yesterday’s arrest warrant issued against Bryan Micon, the former chairman of Seals With Clubs bitcoin poker site, and current chairman of SWCpoker.eu.
Micon, and Seals With Clubs, are charged with operated a gambling website without a license in the state of Nevada, and if convicted he could face up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
You may remember Micon for his interesting YouTube video that was posted after Seals With Clubs shut down where he announced the opening of a new site, SWCpoker.eu. The video shows Micon at a tropical destination (which is supposed current whereabouts) not too worried about the closure of his major Bitcoin poker website and looking forward to the next venture. Unfortunately for Micon, agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board were a lot more interested in Seals With Clubs than Micon was.
What’s interesting about this development is how it sheds more light on the recent closure of the Seals site. Many believed that the site was dropped due to a security breach or something of that nature as there weren’t many details released at the time. However, it appears that Micon merely evaded the gaming agents by shutting down the site and getting out of Dodge while they were investigating illegal gambling activity.
Gaming Agent Ricardo Lopez signed up at Seals With Clubs and played around 30 hands of poker as means of understanding the Bitcoin site and explained how purchasing Bitcoins was essentially the same as chips at a Las Vegas casino.
In a state like Nevada, where the majority of industry is gambling, operating a casino or poker website without a license is only going to last for a limited amount of time. This isn’t the first Bitcoin-related federal case that has presented major developments recently, but it is the first involving a major gambling site.
This development marks “the first instance of state-level criminal prosecution in Nevada of an illegal Internet poker site using Bitcoin as currency.”
Press release from the Nevada Attorney General.
Currently, Micon’s attorneys are not revealing any information about his location, but did state that “Bryan has always maintained that he committed no wrongdoing”. In fact, Micon has set up a crowdfunding page for his legal defense that has already raised more than $2,000.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board will be continuing its search for Micon in order to bring him to trial and we will update the story with more details as they come to light.
