Gary Kaplan (born January 5, 1959, in New York) is the founder of BetonSports.com (BoS), an online sports betting company which took in wagers amounting to nearly $4 billion from 2002 and 2004, 98 percent of which came from the United States.
[2] In 1993, after he moving from New York to South Florida, he noticed how bookies would fly to the Caribbean where gambling was legal to place bets for American bettors.
[2] Instead of relying on word-of-mouth to obtain customers, the norm in the industry, Kaplan implemented an extensive marketing campaign buying full-page ads in mainstream publications including Maxim magazine and Pro Football Weekly, on sports radio such as The Jim Rome Show, leased billboards, and sent out promotional mail.
[2] In 2000, he hired British citizen David Carruthers as CEO and after initially failing to float the company on the London Stock Exchange, they were successful in July 2004.
Other violations noted in the indictment included Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, interstate transportation of gambling paraphernalia, interference with the administration of Internal Revenue Service laws and tax evasion.