Betonsports chief David Carruthers has dropped his guilty plea to racketeering charges just days before he was to be sentenced in the US.
Carruthers has spent three years under house arrest in a hotel in Missouri awaiting his court appearance for breaching internet gambling restrictions.
Carruthers was chief executive of the betting firm Betonsports until he was arrested in 2006 while changing planes at Dallas airport en route from Britain to the company’s operational base in Costa Rica.
Earlier this year, he agreed to plead guilty under a deal with prosecutors in return for a recommended penalty of 33 months’ imprisonment. His lawyers had planned to argue at a hearing that he had served his time and should go free immediately, reported The Sunday Mail. But Carruthers chose to withdraw his confession.
