Burke County gambling operation leads to hefty financial penalties
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Three men who admitted to their involvement in gambling operations that raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars – over half a million of which the government got to collect as part of the plea agreement – were sentenced Wednesday.
Grady Brandon Mobley and Daniel Cates of Burke County and Joel Rees Jones of Greenwood, S.C., pleaded guilty in March in U.S. District Court in Augusta to violation of the prohibition of illegal gambling. Mobley also admitted to filing a fraudulent income tax return for 2017.
Chief Judge J. Randal Hall sentenced Mobley to five years’ probation with a $340,000 forfeiture payment, $207,716 payment in restitution to the government, and a $2,000 fine. Jones was sentenced to four years’ probation with a $10,000 fine, and Cates was sentenced to three years’ probation with a $100,000 forfeiture and a $4,000 fine.
IRS and FBI agents built the case against the three, finding evidence Mobley operated as a bookie for at least 10 years in Burke County. He eventually joined his operation with an online sports betting website operated out of Costa Rica, according to court statements made during the men’s March hearing.
In September 2015, Mobley and Jones joined their gambling business and split the proceeds.
Jones told federal agents he kept to a cash-only business. Mobley used his parents' legal check-cashing business for a time, then moved to Cates' tire store to clean traces of illegal gains, according to the federal investigation. Between 2014 and 2017 federal agents traced $250,000 of gambling funds that went through Cates' business.
