Brent Beckley, the 31- year-old co-founder of the now-defunct Absolute Poker has plead guilty to charges of criminal bank fraud.

Last Tuesday, December 20, 2011, one of the online poker execs charged in the year's earlier federal seizure dubbed Black Friday, Brent Beckley of Absolute Poker, pleaded guilty to criminal charges of U.S. bank fraud. Before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, Beckley admitted between 2006 and 2011 accepting credit card payments from players in the U.S. so they could gamble online and disguising the purpose for those payments.

Co-founder and co-owner of the site closed on April 15, 2011 along with PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, Beckley filed his plea in a Manhattan federal court, which included conspiring to knowingly break federal Internet gambling laws and conspiracy to commit both bank and wire fraud, all of which were declared enforceable crimes under the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

So far, the government has charged 12 people in the Black Friday seizures of assets from Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars, including Beckley's Absolute Poker partner, Scott Tom.

Under the plea deal, Beckley will likely receive from 12 to 18 months in prison rather than the 30 years that he had been facing.

A co-conspirator in Beckley's case, Ira Rubin, who spent years living in Central America to avoid facing a charge in telemarketing fraud, is also in discussions with his lawyer to reach a plea agreement. Rubin had been hired by Absolute Poker to process e-checks in a way that concealed their true purpose, processing them as affiliate marketing, payroll processing and other online merchant activities.