Anurag Dikshit, the man behind PartyGaming and it’s existing software platform, is paying a hefty price this week in order to avoid prison time for violating the 1961 Wire Act.

How hefty you might ask yourself?

Try $300,000,000 healthy - and no, the added zeros in that figure are not typos.

Dikshit, who is actually worth a little over a billion dollars, will be paying forward three separate payments of $100 million to the U.S. Department of Justice over the next several years. Unfortunately for him, he is the ONLY person at PartyGaming that will be penalized, even though other shareholders could be considered just as responsible for what had transpired.

He will stay remain the largest shareholder of the very company he started, with a 27% majority; however, his company’s stock will most likely dwindle for the next few months with news of the verdict. The publicly-traded U.K. gaming company is one of the biggest in the industry - and before the 2006 UIGEA, was the largest poker room in the world.

This past Sunday, the AP/UB scandal that rocked the online poker community just over a year ago was finally being exposed thanks to a controversial piece that was being aired by CBS producers on the popular television show “60 Minutes.”

The interviews conducted included sit-downs with former WSOP bracelet winner Todd Witteles, a Kahnawake Gaming Commission representative, as well as several other online poker players.

The producers did an excellent job of naming the people involved in cracking open the initial investigation (the players themselves), as well as really putting on the heat towards the main conspirator of the scandal, Russ Hamilton.

The full video can be seen by clicking on the story itself, courtesy of the Guru.

As some of my readers have already seen, I posted a story on a pending lawsuit that was filed by Clonie Gowen’s attorneys in a Las Vegas court yesterday. At the time of the posting, it was unknown why she was bringing her former employers to court in the first place.

Well, after a few more hours from the initial breaking of the story - and some extra digging by the media staff over at PokerNews.com, it looks as if we finally have an answer:

She’s suing Full Tilt Poker for $40,000,000 over a breach of contract!

Gowen alleges that when she signed on as a Full Tilt pro back in 2004, she was promised a 1% ownership of the company. She went on to sport FTP gear around the tournament circuit, appeared in television commercials and promotional ads, and essentially did her part in promoting the Online Poker mega-brand as best she could - for no added compensation beyond her supposed 1% stake in the company.

22-year old Peter Eastgate enjoyed the spoils of his tremendous victory this past weekend, as he triumphed over Russian counterpart Ivan Demidov in the 2008 WSOP Main Event.

Eastgate not only won the $9M+ 1st place prize, but in the process also became the youngest Main Event champion in World Series of Poker history, beating out Phil Hellmuth’s long-standing record!

Click on the story title for more.

Bodog was once thought to be one of the most invincible online gambling franchises on the planet. However, “The Brand That Ayre Built” has been slowly been deteriorating in the eyes of its players and many are unsure when the bleeding might stop.

Calvin Ayre (pictured to the left) built it up from a small sportsbetting site in the 90’s to one of the most flourishing enterprises the industry had ever seen. He developed the brand from just a highly-popular sportsbook and evolved it into one of the hottest poker rooms and casinos the world had ever seen - that is, until recently…

Russ Hamilton, the WSOP Main Event champion in 1994, has been implicated as the main suspect in the ongoing Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker superuser investigation.

Hamilton, who was known to have run the affiliate program for the site when it first broke into the industry many years ago, has been named along with several others as being the main figures behind a scandal that involved stealing millions of dollars from high stakes players through sophisticated cheating methods involving the seeing of hole cards.

The Poker Players Alliance submitted what is called an “Amicus Brief” earlier today at the same courthouse where Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear filed a court order earlier this week on behalf of the state to attempt to seize 141 gambling and poker-related domain names.

The brief is the first attempt by the PPA to put a block on any court order that may cause many of the world’s top gambling sites to hand over their domain names to the Kentucky government - the most prized ones on the list? PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com.

Internet: Serious Business.

The culmination of 33 events in this year’s PokerStars WCOOP came to an end on Monday evening, as the $5,200 Main Event finally concluded after two days of intense play.

Full Tilt Red Pro Brian Townsend is officially online poker’s biggest D-BAG…for now.

Brian Townsend admitted earlier this week on his personal Cardrunners blog that he was indeed guilty of using multiple accounts/user names to play online poker.

Allegations had been mounting for weeks on numerous poker forums and media outlets, and after a few days of sitting on the sidelines as the heat from the accusations mounted, he finally came clean…