Top Vegas sports bettor, family to pay $4.2M forfeiture

Leading Las Vegas sports bettor Glen Cobb was sentenced to one year of probation Tuesday for his role in what federal prosecutors alleged was a multimillion-dollar illegal gambling operation.

His 83-year-old parents, Charles and Anna Cobb, and his stepdaughter Monica Namnard, 32, were allowed to walk out of court without probation or any supervision in the wake of their misdemeanor guilty pleas entered in April.

But U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware ordered all four to share payment of a $4.2 million forfeiture to the government.

Boulware also ordered Glen Cobb, 50, to allow probation officers to monitor his computers during his year of probation to ensure that he does not place illegal wagers with off-shore sports books.

Cobb, who pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor gambling charges, told Boulware the $4.2 million forfeiture judgment was plenty of incentive to refrain from dealing with the offshore operations.

Federal prosecutors did not ask for prison time, but they sought to ban the family members from entering casinos, arguing in court papers that to do otherwise would be like “letting the fox back into the hen house.”

Boulware refused to order it, saying it would take away the family's livelihood.

Defense lawyers John Kinchen and Kathleen Bliss argued that offshore wagering was a very small portion of the family's betting operation and that most of the wagering was done legally at Las Vegas casinos.

Lycur, the now-defunct company that ran the betting business, also was ordered to share in the forfeiture judgment. Lycur pleaded guilty to a felony charge of transmission of wagering information.

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

Boulware ordered the government to return $9 million of the $13.2 million IRS and U.S. Secret Service agents seized from the Cobb family during raids in 2013. The four family members all were initially charged with felonies, but those charges went away with the plea agreements.

After the sentencings, Bliss accused the government of "overreaching," and Kitchen said its actions amounted to "first-class intimidation" to get as much money as it could out of Glenn Cobb. That included charging his elderly parents, he said.

Kinchen said the misdemeanor plea offers to the family members were made only after prosecutors realized the four defendants were determined to go to trial.

"Glen's fault was that he was too good at what he did," Kinchen said. "The government didn't take the time to learn how he made his money. We're happy it's over, but we're disappointed by what our clients had to go through."

The Cobb investigation attracted public attention last year after a federal magistrate judge criticized secret government efforts to keep all of the $13.2 million seized by the IRS and Secret Service.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach issued a written decision criticizing federal prosecutors for filing two civil forfeiture actions under a little-known procedure that gave no notice to the Cobbs or anyone else.

Prosecutors abandoned the civil forfeiture efforts after the Cobbs were indicted and sought to keep the seized cash through the criminal proceedings.

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