Despite reports to the suggestive contrary, indicted online poker payment processor Daniel Tzvetkoff has not been released on bail. The 27-year-old Australian, who briefly lived the \”baller\” life of a gray-market money-transfering kingpin, is still in custody in the North Las Vegas Detention Center, awaiting a decision from a federal judge in New York on his temporary fate, according to a Deputy US Marshal in Las Vegas.
As the first ever accused UIGEA criminal, Tzvetkoff faces up to 75 years in prison on multiple fraud and money laundering charges related to his dealings with American online poker players, American banks, and American-friendly online poker sites, including Full Tilt, PokerStars, Absolute, and Ultimate Bet.
Though I don\’t fully understand all the jurisdictional details, supposedly the district court in New York trumps any ruling from the federal magistrate in North Las Vegas, who granted bail on the surety of his father\’s $1.2 million house in Brisbane and the condition that the elder Tzvetkoff would drive his son to New York where he will be tried.
(They haven\’t even gotten to a lingering detention order from the Department of Homeland Security, which theoretically coulda had him sent to Guantanamo not that long ago to be waterboarded for all the information he knows about the identity of Isildur1 online poker.)
Personally, I was wondering why they were gonna let Tzvetkoff\’s dad drive him from Vegas to NYC. I mean shit, this is the Southern District … they think in terms of mobsters, and it seems like the Vegas judge was just begging to have the broke former multimillionaire kid run off the road somewhere near the Grand Canyon.
The Deputy Marshal says that depending on the New York judge\’s decision — no date on when it\’s expected — Tzvetkoff will either have his bail re-granted (at which point they will deal with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement issue) or denied and likely flown to New York, where he will be transfered to a federal detention facility there as he awaits trial.