The chairman of British online gambling company Sportingbet PLC was released on $50,000 bail Friday after being arrested in New York on a fugitive warrant.
Peter Dicks was arrested at Kennedy International Airport late Wednesday following his arrival on a flight from England.
Customs, performing a routine name check, discovered he had an outstanding warrant issued by the Louisiana State Police Gaming Enforcement Division.
Dicks appeared Friday at state Supreme Court in Queens, where acting Justice John Latella released him on $50,000 bail but ordered him to surrender his passport and stay in the New York metropolitan area during the extradition process. He is due back in court on Sept. 14.
Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for the Queens district attorney, said Dicks’ attorney, Peter Neiman, indicated that he would fight Dicks’ extradition to Louisiana.
Neiman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The May warrant charged Dicks, who lives in London, with gambling by computer, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Louisiana authorities want to bring Dicks back to stand trial in St. Landry Parish, where the warrant for his arrest was signed.
Frank Trosclair, a St. Landry Parish assistant district attorney, said his office was preparing extradition paperwork that will go through the governor’s office before reaching New York.
Dicks, 64, is the second executive of a British Internet sports-betting company to be held in the U.S.
David Carruthers, former chief executive officer of BetOnSports PLC, was arrested in July. The company fired Carruthers, who remains under house arrest in the St. Louis area awaiting trial, and closed its U.S. Web sites.
The founder of Abingdon PLC, a private equity firm, Dicks is also a director at Nasdaq-listed Polar Technology Trust PLC and Standard Microsystems Corp. He has been non-executive director at Sportingbet since 2000.