A U.S. District Court judge sentenced a 73-year-old Benton County man Monday to three years of probation for operating a large-scale illegal gambling business in northwest Arkansas.
Robert E. Rogers will have to spend 18 months of his probation on home confinement. He also was fined $250,000 by Judge Timothy L. Brooks during the 75-minute sentencing proceeding held in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville.
Rogers was ordered not to “engage in any gambling activities of any kind, and he shall not enter any gambling establishment” while on probation, according to a court record.
Rogers pleaded guilty in December to one charge of operating a gambling business and agreed to forfeit nearly $220,000, plus a 2013 Ford Flex, jewelry and a 2016 Manitou Aurora Angler 20 Pontoon Boat and Mercury engine.
In exchange for the plea, the U.S. attorney for the Western District allowed Rogers to keep his homes in Rogers and Grove, Oklahoma, and dropped one count of money laundering.
His attorney, Kimberly Weber of the law firm Matthews Campbell Rhoads McClure & Thompson in Rogers, suggested to the judge in an April 17 filing that a lower sentence is “applicable in this case.”
She said that he was paying taxes on the wagers made, which in 2015 totaled $933,000.
“For a time, Mr. Rogers thought by paying his excise tax, he was free to take wagers,” she wrote. “He has since learned that despite the government accepting his fees and taxes, he was in violation of federal law.”
In addition, Rogers “NEVER collected debt from players in a nefarious way,” Weber wrote. “If he had all the money in bets owed, the forfeiture would be less disastrous to his retirement and the livelihood of his family.”
Weber argued that Rogers also should receive a lighter sentence because he served in Vietnam. “His service to our country was magnanimous and deserving of a downward departure,” Weber wrote.
Rogers faced up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
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