Jon Kyl Praised AG for Prosecuting Doug Ducey's Uncle

Stephen Lemons November 14, 2014 7:05AM

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As a result, Scott forfeited $7 million in frozen assets and was sentenced to three years supervised probation. He had spent more than a decade evading U.S. justice on the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, where he ran his Internet gambling empire World Wide Tele-Sports.

For Kyl to overlook Ducey's notorious uncle would require some serious denial, particularly since Kyl often has assailed Internet gambling as being on par with illicit drug use and moral rot.

For example, during a 1999 hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information, Kyl pimped a ban on Internet gambling, compared virtual casinos to cocaine, and asserted that online wagering "is apt to lead to criminal behavior."

And in a 2003 press release from his office, the senator promoted a bill that would have applied "criminal penalties of up to five years in prison to operators of Internet gambling sites," while railing against the evils of online wagering.

"Internet gambling is not a fun diversion, but feeds a dangerous and growing addiction," Kyl said at the time. "It is linked to organized crime, rife with fraud, ruins credit ratings and allows many young people to build up thousands of dollars in debt on their parents credit cards."

Organized crime? You betcha. Enter Ducey's uncle, whom Kyl mentioned in 2006, during remarks at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, while he praised then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for using the federal Wire Act to go after sports gambling on the Internet.

"I wrote to you May 18," Kyl told Gonzales, according to video of the hearing captured by C-SPAN, "complimenting [your] office for an indictment obtained against a William Scott and a Jessica Davis of Soulbury Limited and World Wide Tele-Sports, Inc. for laundering about $250 million worth of Internet gambling wages."

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