An Antigua man who had been charged 13 years ago in connection to a large-scale illegal gambling ring with former Congressman John Tierney’s brothers-in-law has been arrested.
Richard Sullivan, 73, of St. John’s, Antigua, was recently arrested more than a decade after being charged in connection with the illegal gambling business — which used an Antiguan website but operated in the continental U.S.
Sullivan was indicted by a Boston federal grand jury in 2010 with racketeering (RICO), operating an illegal gambling business, transmission of wagering information, money laundering and interstate travel in aid of racketeering.
He was arrested on Sunday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York while going through customs upon his return to the U.S. from Antigua. Sullivan was arraigned in the Eastern District of New York, and he will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, two of Sullivan’s co-conspirators were Robert Eremian and Daniel Eremian — the brothers-in-law of Tierney, the ex-North Shore Democratic congressman. The Eremian brothers were accused of building a massive online gambling ring called “Sports Offshore” based in Antigua.
Sullivan and his co-defendants — the Eremian brothers and Todd Lyons — were charged with more than 75 counts of engaging in U.S. banking transactions involving U.S.-based gamblers to pay gambling debts owed to Sports Offshore.
According to the feds, Sports Offshore was an online gambling site licensed in Antigua that was actually operating in the U.S., conducting an illegal gambling business that stretched from Massachusetts to Florida.
The gambling ring employed about 50 gambling agents in the U.S., who had hundreds of customers. Daniel Eremian originally solicited gambling customers from a Peabody bar and eventually moved to Florida, where he continued to collect money from other gambling agents, the feds said.
Lyons acted as an agent in Massachusetts, driving throughout the state to collect millions of dollars lost by gamblers. The defendants often used FedEx to ship cash and checks back and forth to Antigua, and they also used a mail drop in Belize to receive proceeds of illegal gambling activities.
In total, the co-conspirators collected more than $22 million for Sports Offshore through the illegal gambling operation and laundered more than $10 million in checks and wire transfers.
Tierney’s wife Patrice previously served a month behind bars for helping her brother Robert file false tax returns. She testified at trial that she and her husband visited Sports Offshore’s offices at least twice in the decade-plus he held federal office. Years ago, Tierney repeatedly denied that he knew about the illegal gambling ring.
In the 2014 Democratic primary, Tierney lost to now-Congressman Seth Moulton.