Prosecutors had been investigating offshore sports gambling since 1997, and BetOnSports since 2001.
"They're not going to stop the offshore sports books," Mr. Walker said.
On DonBest.com, many of the prominent offshore sports books, including Cascade, show their lines in real time.
Shawna Meisner, the director of the Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Classic offshore sports fishing tournament in the Gulf of Mexico, had been one of the last holdouts.
A spectacular recent example is of the former owner of Aces Gold Casino, which until last year was a well-regarded offshore sports book in Curaçao.
His law partner, though, was friends with Jay Cohen, an operator of an offshore sports betting operation in Antigua who had been sentenced to 21 months in prison for taking bets over the Internet from Americans.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The founder of the online gambling site BetOnSports.com was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison, ending a prosecution of one of the world's largest offshore sports gambling companies.
Thirty people and a corporation were indicted in Queens in connection with an offshore sports betting operation with links to organized crime that took in a "staggering" half-billion dollars in wagers, New York authorities said on Wednesday.
And while all sports books have limits on the amount of money a single gambler can bet, usually between $3,000 to $10,000, depending on the sport, the professional gambler can easily exceed these limits by using a "syndicate," or a crew of "beards," who have accounts at multiple offshore sports books and spread bets around for him.
Each year at Super Bowl time, N.F.L executives go to great lengths to distance the league from the estimated $10 billion in gambling that it generates, not only in Las Vegas but also in offshore sports betting shops, office and bar pools and among illegal bookies.
