Dikshit and his partners, Russell DeLeon and his wife, Ruth Parasol DeLeon, founded PartyGaming in 1997 and launched PartyPoker in 2001. PartyPoker quickly became the most popular online poker site in the world. The company launched an initial public offering in 2005, which made Dikshit and his partners into billionaires.

 

 

With the passage of the UIGEA in 2006, PartyPoker withdrew from the lucrative US market. The US Department of Justice began pursuing criminal charges against Dikshit, but not his two partners. Dikshit entered a guilty plea and began negotiating with federal prosecutors to determine the severity of his punishment.

 

 

US District Judge Jed Rakoff admonished prosecutors on their pursuit of Dikshit. “Nobody else has been indicted,” the judge said. “It has been two years since this defendant began cooperating, what’s going on?”

 

 

Arlo Devlin-Brown, the Assistant US Attorney in charge of the prosecution, said that the case contained “challenges” and admitted that Dikshit has arranged to settle the case early in the process. “It has been two years and there are reasons,” Devlin-Brown said, but would not elaborate on those reasons.

 

 

Mark Pomerantz, Dikshit’s attorney, credited his client’s willingness to cooperate with prosecutors. Although Dikshit is a citizen of India and did not expect to be extradited for his crimes, he agreed to enter the guilty plea and to the forfeiture of much of his fortune.