Despite a damning recent WTO ruling, which stated that US authorities were conspicuously targeting foreign online gaming companies, whilst it still had a “flourishing” online gambling industry of its own, the US Department of Justice clearly has no intentions of stepping down its pursuit of online gambling targets.

Gary Kaplan, a former resident of New York, was arrested in the Dominican Republic last week, before being transferred to Puerto Rico where he was denied bail and extradited to the US. There, in St Louis, he joins former BoS executive David Carruthers, whose arrest in July 2006 marked the beginning of the US crackdown on the online gambling industry.

The two men stand charged with a variety of offences, mostly racketeering and fraud, relating to the bookmaking side of the BoS operation. The US case against them is being led by federal attorney Catherine Hanaway, a conservative anti-gambling prosecutor, and will be based on laws that existed prior to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

In an interestingly twist to Kaplan’s extradition it is widely rumoured that Kaplan surrendered himself to the US authorities. Reports have been circling for a while now that his lawyers had been negotiating a deal, and the fact that his arrest happened in the Dominican Republic, rather than his resident country of Antigua, is being used as evidence by some to suggest a deal was in the works.

Kaplan is expected to apply for bail during his first court appearance in St Louis. In the meantime BetOnSports continues to be fined $10,000 per day for failing to have its current officers appear in court.