Top left to right: Rafael Esquivel, Jose Maria Marin, Eduardo Li, and Eugenio Figueredo. Bottom left to right: Nicolas Leoz, Jack Warner, Jeffrey Webb, and Julio Rocha. The eight men are among nine football officials indicted on corruption charges the United States Justice department confirmed on May 27, 2015.
A son of indicted former FIFA vice president Jack Warner detailed his role in a lucrative scam to resell World Cup tickets, in court testimony released Friday.
Daryan Warner pleaded guilty in October 2013 to three counts that include wire fraud and money laundering as part of the ticketing scam for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups in Germany and South Africa.
“I agreed with others to purchase tickets to the 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cup and resell at a substantial profit,” he told a court in New York, according to a transcript put online by Buzzfeed.
He faces a possible 20 years in prison and consented to forfeit more than $1.17 million at the closed-doors hearing on October 18, 2013. The transcript was unsealed at the request of American journalists.
Warner will have to forfeit a second amount — reflecting the monies he obtained from ticket sales — at sentencing.
He told the court that he carried out the crimes in Florida and admitted that he “misled” FIFA over his role in the scam.
He also admitted to depositing more than $100,000 in banks from July to December 2011 in amounts of less than $10,000 to avoid having to complete tax paperwork for larger transactions, an offense known as “structuring.”
Three months earlier, his younger brother Daryl Warner, a dual citizen of the United States and Trinidad and Tobago, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and “structuring” at a separate court hearing on July 15, 2013.
The Warner brothers are among four people who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the massive US investigation into systemic corruption at FIFA that has rocked the football world.
Daryl Warner admitted to taking part in a scheme to obtain a mortgage loan on the basis of false information and use the proceeds to buy a $990,000 home in Miami for himself and family members.
Their father handed himself into police in Trinidad and Tobago after the indictments were unsealed, and was released on $400,000 bail pending a decision on whether to extradite him to the United States.
Warner, one of 14 people wanted by US authorities as part of the scandal, claims to have an “avalanche” of secrets that include details on FIFA’s outgoing president Sepp Blatter.
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