About this app
About Ripe Rewards
Philip Pietras, 52, admitted to stealing from more than 170 people, many of whom are senior citizens who sought to limit the emotional and financial burdens placed on their loved ones by prepaying for their funerals. But instead of placing those funds, meant for caskets and burial services, in escrow accounts, Pietras pocketed the money to gamble.
Pietras accepted a plea deal from the state, and prosecutors expect him to enter a guilty plea on Oct. 23 and be formally sentenced on Jan. 22, 2027.
Under the terms of the state’s offer, Pietras will admit to stealing his clients’ money for his personal use. In exchange for his admission, the state has recommended a prison sentence of 7.5 years instead of 15 years, followed by five years of probation.
About Ripe Rewards
The system starts with domains that have already been identified by authorities. Trace2Trace then crawls them, looking for technical connections and similarities.
These include shared hosting, DNS clusters, source-code strings, tracking systems, logos and favicons. The system can also follow redirects and other mechanisms that may not be visible through a conventional web request.
A website might initially appear to be a normal local site, while behind it sits an iframe, JavaScript redirect or a chain of other pages leading to the actual gambling destination.
About Ripe Rewards
Laos argues they were effectively indistinguishable from the companies that were ordered to pay and should therefore be held responsible for the debt.
A federal judge previously rejected Laos’ attempt to pursue Baldwin and Bridge Capital because they had not been parties to the original arbitrations.
But the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision Thursday (September 17).
