The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Mary­land has announced that a grand jury on April 26 handed down two indict­ments, unsealed today, accus­ing two inter­net gam­bling com­pa­nies and three indi­vid­u­als of ille­gal gam­bling and money laundering.

The indict­ments are part of the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice’s ongo­ing inter­na­tional inves­ti­ga­tion into ille­gal pro­cess­ing of online gam­bling pro­ceeds. As City Paper has reported pre­vi­ously, here and in a mul­ti­tude of arti­cles pub­lished since 2008, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors in Mary­land have been actively pur­su­ing crim­i­nal charges while seek­ing for­fei­ture of large amounts of seized funds tied to online gam­bling. Some Mary­land defen­dants in the probe have been revealed in open court to be coop­er­at­ing with author­i­ties both in Mary­land and in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. The Mary­land indict­ments unsealed today come on the heels of New York indict­ments, handed down in April, charg­ing top man­agers of two of the world’s largest inter­net gam­bling com­pa­nies, Absolute Poker and Ulti­mate Bet, with ille­gal gam­bling and money laundering.

The indict­ments announced in Mary­land today are against ThrillX Sys­tems Ltd., doing busi­ness as BetEd, and K23 Group Finan­cial Ser­vices, which oper­ates under the ban­ner BMX Enter­tain­ment. Named in the ThrillX indict­ment are Dar­ren Wright and David Par­chom­chuk of British Colum­bia, Canada. Ann Marie Puig of San Jose, Costa Rica, is named in the K23 Group indictment.

Accord­ing to a search-and-seizure war­rant affi­davit in sup­port of seiz­ing 11 bank accounts and 10 inter­net gam­bling site domain names, U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity inves­ti­ga­tors made the case in part by set­ting up a front com­pany that entered the payment-processing busi­ness to han­dle gam­bling money. The front com­pany, called Lin­wood Pay­ment Solu­tions, started up in 2009 and han­dled $33 mil­lion in trans­ac­tions as inves­ti­ga­tors gath­ered evi­dence of ille­gal gam­bling and money laundering.

Tags: bmx entertainment, online gambling, thrill systems