Programmer to plead guilty in fraud case

The Palm Harbor man tricked a Web company into paying $653,000 in fraudulent commissions.

By RICHARD DANIELSON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 10, 2002

A Palm Harbor computer programmer has agreed to plead guilty in federal court to orchestrating an Internet fraud that scammed a porn-related Web business out of $653,000, prosecutors said Thursday.

Programmer Allen William Bacher Gambert, 38, ran a scheme that tricked Adult Revenue Services Inc. into paying fraudulent commissions from October 2000 to April 2001, prosecutors say.

Gambert and two relatives received more than $310,000 in the scam, according to his 15-page plea agreement. He could not be reached for comment Thursday night.

Four other people and one corporation also have agreed to plead guilty. They include 25-year-old programmer Bobby Lee Smith of Largo, whom prosecutors say has admitted to stealing $47,515. Also charged is 29-year-old Christopher Martin Lynch of Zephyrhills, Lynch's company, Webcat Holdings, Inc., 29-year-old Jonathan Robert Medici of Gainesville and 26-year-old Julie Beth Williams of Woodbridge, N.J.

Each defendant faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine upon a conviction of accessing a protected computer to commit fraud. Webcat Holdings could be fined up to $500,000.

The defendants all previously worked for a Tampa company, Entertainment Network Inc., which is best known for launching the Voyeur Dorm Web site.

All the defendants except for Smith either had already left the company or were terminated when the scheme came to light, Entertainment Network CEO David Marshlack said Thursday. The company is suing all the defendants except Smith in civil court, he said. Smith remains employed at Entertainment Network and is paying restitution, Marshlack said.

"We did find this problem . . . we turned it all over to the FBI," Marshlack said.

Court records show that Gambert was a programmer hired as an independent contractor by Entertainment Network. As part of his job, he had access to computers belonging to Adult Revenue Service, a company that pays Web site operators to send customers to sexually explicit Web sites that have signed up with ARS.

Prosecutors say Gambert wrote a bit of computer code that led Adult Revenue Service to pay referral commissions to eight dummy accounts that had been set up by Gambert and his friends.

The investigation is continuing and is expected to result in more charges, prosecutors said.

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