Four plead guilty in federal case targeting illegal sports bets

Sports bettor Glen Cobb and his family pleaded guilty Monday in a long-running investigation of a multimillion-dollar illegal gambling operation.

Cobb, 50, pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor accessory after the fact to the crime of transmission of wagering information. His parents, Charles and Anna Cobb, both 83, and stepdaughter, Monica Namnard, 32, each pleaded guilty to one count of the gambling misdemeanor.

Lycur — the family’s now-defunct company that ran the betting operation with the help of offshore sports books — pleaded guilty to a felony charge of transmission of wagering information.

The company, owned by Glen Cobb, was engaged in illegal betting with at least one offshore gambling site between March 2011 and December 2013, according to the plea agreements.

The four family members, all initially charged with felonies, agreed to share with Lycur in the forfeiture of $4.2 million of the $13.2 million the government seized from them in 2013. They are to be sentenced on July 28 before U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II.

The Cobb investigation, which began in 2002, attracted public attention last year after a federal magistrate judge criticized secret government efforts to keep $13.2 million the IRS and Secret Service had seized from the Cobbs.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach issued a written decision ripping federal prosecutors for filing two civil forfeiture actions under a little-known court process, called super sealing, that gave no notice to the Cobbs or anyone else.

Government documents filed under super seal, a procedure overseen by the federal clerk’s office, are stored in the court’s vault and not loaded into the electronic case management system.

Prosecutors abandoned the civil forfeiture efforts after the Cobbs were indicted and sought to keep the seized money through the criminal proceedings. Court officials have since changed the name of super sealing to special processing but have made no significant changes to the secretive process.

The Cobb family members initially faced charges of structuring financial transactions to hide $2.6 million from the IRS, but those charges were dropped as part of the plea deals.

The government is not seeking restitution from the Cobbs because they have agreed to forfeit the $4.2 million, which is considered the proceeds from the illegal gambling activities of Lycur between 2011 and 2013.

According to the plea agreements, Lycur placed illegal bets across state and international lines on the Costa Rican website, www.betgrande.com, during that time.

The company made “well in excess of $3 million” in wagers on sporting events between 2011 and 2013, the agreements state.

The government is returning roughly $9 million in cash to the Cobb family, minus any money owed to the IRS or other government agencies.

Contact reporter Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow him on Twitter: @JGermanRJ.