United States Attorney
Northern District of Texas

1100 Commerce St., 3rd Fl.
Dallas, Texas 75242-1699

Telephone (214) 659-8600
Fax (214) 767-0978

FORT WORTH MAN WHO RAN INVESTMENT SCHEME SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON, WITHOUT PAROLE

Defendant Also Ordered to Pay Nearly $1 Million in Restitution

FORT WORTH, TX. — Robert Eon Marshall was sentenced this morning by U.S. District Judge John McBryde to 120 months in prison and ordered to pay $915,449 in restitution, announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper of the Northern District of Texas. Following the sentencing, Judge McBryde ordered that the U.S. Marshals take immediate custody of Marshall.

Marshall, 58, pled guilty in January to a one-count Information charging him with mail fraud. Marshall was the founder and president of a Fort Worth company called ECM Group. Sometime during the summer of 2003, he began operating two websites called World Poker Party.com (WPP) and Double Your Money Casino.com (DYMC). Marshall used WPP and DYMC to enter into an affiliate program with two other established on-line gambling websites. These two host websites would pay Marshall a percentage of the losses suffered by gamblers who entered their gambling websites via Marshall’s affiliate web sites. An individual who was on one of Marshall’s websites would simply click on a link which would direct them to the host websites where they could gamble on-line.

Marshall sold units of ownership in his company for $10,000 a unit. Each ownership unit conveyed an interest in the net revenue generated by the company. The primary source of the net revenue was supposed to be the earnings made from his websites, WPP and DYMC. Marshall told his original group of investors that he would build capital in the affiliate program, but would eventually build and develop a stand-alone gambling website with their investments.

Marshall represented that investors’ earnings would be the result of the income stream generated from WPP and DYMC. However, from August 2003 to July 2004, Marshall’s affiliation program generated less than $1000 in revenue for the company. Marshall intentionally misled his group of investors to falsely believe that his affiliation websites were financially successful. Marshall held investor meetings during which he would falsely tout incredible earnings. Marshall also mailed letters to the investors which contained false earnings reports.

Marshall’s scheme caused the investors to believe the company was tremendously successful, thus causing many of them to invest even more money. Some of the 41 fraud victims were elderly and had given thousands of retirement dollars to Marshall under the false belief the company was profitable. These 41 victims of Marshall’s scheme suffered more than $900,000 in losses.

U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bret Helmer.

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