United States v. Lyons

870 F. Supp. 2d 281, 2012 WL 2497656
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedJune 29, 2012
DocketCriminal No. 10-10159-PBS
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 870 F. Supp. 2d 281 (United States v. Lyons) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Lyons, 870 F. Supp. 2d 281, 2012 WL 2497656 (D. Mass. 2012).

Opinion

AMENDED FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND ORDER OF FORFEITURE

SARIS, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Defendants Todd Lyons and Daniel Eremian were convicted after a jury trial of racketeering conspiracy in violation of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d); racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c); operating an illegal gambling business in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1955; and violating the federal Wire Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1084.1 They waived their right to a jury trial on the government’s forfeiture allegations. The government now seeks a joint and several Order of Forfeiture (Money Judgment) in the amount of $41,650,263 pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1963 and Fed.R.Crim.P. 32.2(b). After a three-day bench trial beginning on March 26, 2012, the court makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law.

II. FINDINGS OF FACT

This case concerns a large gambling enterprise, Sports Offshore (“SOS”), headquartered in Antigua and operating in Massachusetts, Florida, South Carolina and other parts of the United States from 1996 through 2010. The leaders of SOS were co-defendants Robert Eremian and Richard Sullivan. They live in Antigua and remain fugitives. SOS allowed people in the United States to place bets on sporting events by making telephone calls to Antigua or visiting an internet website. Losing bettors regularly made payments in cash to SOS agents located in the United States, and other payments were submitted via checks made out, or wire transfers sent, to shell corporations, like Benevolence Funding and De Soto, Ltd. Winning bettors received their winnings from SOS agents in the United States. SOS agents were paid commissions of approximately 25%-50% of the losses of the bettors they managed. Forfeiture Tr. Day 1 at 54-55.

Defendants Todd Lyons and Daniel Eremian were members of this large SOS enterprise. Lyons worked for SOS in Massachusetts and received a salary. Lyons served in effect as a bank for SOS, and he also worked as an SOS agent. He was the primary collector of cash and checks for SOS in Massachusetts. He regularly met with many SOS agents in Massachusetts to collect from them the large quantities of money they had collected from their bettors, and he paid out money to SOS agents so they could pay winning bettors. He also served as an agent himself by collecting money directly from, and paying money directly to, his own bettors.

Daniel Eremian, the brother of Robert Eremian, played a role in the SOS conspiracy, conducting SOS activities primarily in his home state of Florida. He traveled with others from the Boston area to Anti[285]*285gua in 1996 for a few weeks to help his brother set up and start the SOS operation, and over the next fourteen years he made more than a dozen trips to Antigua. In Florida he served as an agent collecting money directly from losing bettors and recruiting new bettors. From time to time, his brother Robert would visit him in Florida and discuss SOS business. Their sister, Patricia Tierney, assisted Robert Eremian in Massachusetts.2

Because the SOS enterprise was so large, involved many bettors and agents, and operated in multiple distinct locations, not all activities by all who were involved in all locations were reasonably foreseeable to each person who conspired to advance its unlawful aims. Given the nature of this particular enterprise, I find that SOS proceeds generated by agents not known to Eremian or Lyons at the time they were generated, or by bettors of agents not known to that defendant, were not reasonably foreseeable to that specific defendant. On the other hand, proceeds generated by SOS agents known to a defendant to be a SOS agent, or by bettors of those agents, were reasonably foreseeable to that specific defendant.

In making factual findings regarding the proceeds subject to forfeiture, I will consider the five categories of proceeds addressed by the parties in their briefs: (1) cash proceeds recorded in Lyons’ gaming notebooks; (2) estimated cash proceeds that were not recorded in those gaming notebooks; (3) checks deposited, and wire transfers sent, to the accounts of SOS shell corporations; (4) checks deposited into Todd Lyons’ personal bank account; and (5) checks deposited into Daniel Eremian’s personal bank account.

A. Gaming Notebooks

Lyons maintained detailed handwritten ledgers enumerating the cash he received and paid out for SOS. These gaming notebooks were seized from his home in 2006. (See Gov. Ex. 18 through 28.). Special Agent Sandra Lemansky of the Internal Revenue Service analyzed these notebooks and other financial records related to the proceeds of the SOS gambling operation. As Lemansky credibly testified, the notebooks contain weekly entries from March 1997 through September 2005 indicating the amount of cash Lyons received from and paid out to various SOS agents and the bettors he directly handled as an agent. See Forfeiture Tr. Day 1 at 49, 61. Although SOS continued to operate from 2005 through 2010, there are no gaming notebooks recording cash flows during that time period. The agents are identified in the notebooks by name or agent number, such as “# 83.” Gov. Ex. 18 at 3. In addition, the amounts Lyons received are noted in “in” columns and the amounts he paid out are noted in “out” columns. See, e.g., id. Finally, the entries near the top left-hand corner of the pages represent the amount of cash Lyons had on hand at the beginning of the week. The sum of the amounts listed in the “in” columns of all eleven notebooks covering March 1997 through September 2005 is $21,965,024. See Forfeiture Tr. Day 1 at 61-62. This sum is the gross amount of cash collected by Lyons on behalf of SOS.

No evidence was presented that Eremian knew Lyons, or knew about Lyons. While Eremian was a native of Massachusetts and his relatives (i.e., sister and mother) continued to reside there, there is no evidence that he spent any time in Massachusetts between the time SOS began operating in 1996 and 2010. However, it is likely that Eremian was aware of SOS operations in Massachusetts during that time period because he helped his brother [286]*286set up SOS for the first few weeks of its operation in Antigua. Still, because Eremian lived in Florida and worked as an SOS agent there, his perception of the amount of proceeds generated was limited. Accordingly, the government has not proven it was reasonably foreseeable to Daniel Eremian that Lyons would collect a total of $21,965,024 in proceeds from a large number of agents in Massachusetts on behalf of SOS from March 1997 through September 2005.

Some of the cash proceeds Lyons collected came from Christopher Means, an individual who had worked alongside Eremian in setting up SOS operations in Antigua for several weeks in 1996.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
870 F. Supp. 2d 281, 2012 WL 2497656, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-lyons-mad-2012.