Online Casino Owner Dikshit Finds Bad Luck Only Starts With Name
When Anurag Dikshit was born, he might have thought his naming would be his worst piece of luck. After all, he then went from a technical education in India, to working as a consultant for AT and T in the US, to becoming a billionaire, recognized as Gibraltar's richest man, and number 207 on Forbes' list of the world's wealthy.But that wealth came from Partygaming, the online casino operator he founded and ran with Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon. Parasol had started the company, and gave Dikshit considerable ownership in exchange for his supervision of code writing and technical expertise.
Now the bad luck that inevitably follows a name like Dikshit has caught up to Anurag. After years of hounding by US legal authorities over his Partygaming involvement in online gambling, Dikshit has decided to pay the US government more than $300 million, and hope that his voluntary cooperation can keep him out of jail.
Dikshit's bad luck is spectacular, in many ways. While Partygaming's chief rivals at online poker, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, still accept US customers, Dikshit and Partygaming have forsaken the US market for years. Yet, he is the one pressed by a contorted application of the Wire Act into admitting under duress that he is guilty of federal crimes.
Dikshit's partners in Partygaming, Parasol and DeLeon, seem content to wait out the US aggressiveness, hoping for a milder climate under the incoming Obama administration. Perhaps Dikshit could have learned a lesson from his former patrons and called the US bluff. After all, now seems a peculiar time to fold.
