Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. authorities arrested Sportingbet Plc Chairman Peter Dicks, the second executive of a British gambling company to be held amid a government crackdown on Internet betting.

Dicks, 64, was arrested yesterday at 11:30 p.m. at John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Pasquale DiFulco, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He is being held as a fugitive based on a warrant from Louisiana and is awaiting extradition, DiFulco said. A spokesman for the company declined to comment on his detention.

Shares of online betting companies plunged, and Sportingbet, which gets more than half its revenue from the U.S., asked that trading in its stock be suspended. U.S. officials say online betting sites can be used to launder money and sell drugs, and that they lack safeguards to screen out minors and gambling addicts.

``Unless the chairman is being held on charges unrelated to online gaming, we can probably assume the Department of Justice has an agenda against sports-betting companies that are using telephone lines to make bets,'' said Andrew Lee, an online gaming analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort in London.

Dicks is scheduled to appear in court after 6:30 p.m. in state court in Queens, New York, as a fugitive, said a court clerk who declined to identify herself.

Separately today, Sportingbet said it's in talks with World Gaming Plc for an all-stock takeover valued at 46.2 million pounds ($86 million).

U.S. Clients

A message left at Dicks's home number in London wasn't immediately returned. Donna Sellers, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Sportingbet, which first sold shares to investors in January 2001, accepted almost 150 million sports and gaming wagers in the fiscal third quarter that ended April 30. About four-fifths of clients are American.

The company's net income was 20.7 million pounds in the quarter through April, a 52 percent increase from the year before, on revenue of 507.3 million pounds.

Sportingbet stock slid 44 percent in two days in July after David Carruthers, then chief executive officer of U.K. Web bookmaker Betonsports Plc, was arrested and charged with crimes including racketeering and fraud.

A U.S. court ordered Betonsports to stop accepting wagers from the country, its main market, and return deposits to American gamblers. Betonsports said last month it would shut down units that take bets from the U.S.

U.S. Gains

The number of American customers who used Sportingbet's Web sites to bet on athletics rose 51 percent from a year earlier to almost 165,000 in the quarter. Sports wagers numbered 8.2 million and averaged $51 in size.

Sportingbet, which has a stock market value of 1 billion pounds, announced Dicks was being held today in a statement after asking for the suspension of trading. Shares of PartyGaming Plc, the world's biggest Internet poker company, dropped as much as 19 percent in London.

Online gambling has become a $12 billion-a-year industry for companies including Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, which got more than four-fifths of its sales from the U.S. last year. Carruthers was indicted about a week after American legislators approved a measure to stifle online gambling by restricting the flow of money to illegal gaming Web sites.

Rivals' Shares Slide

PartyGaming shares fell 11.5 pence, or 9.8 percent, to 105.75 pence in London today, rebounding from earlier losses. Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, an Austrian online bookmaker, slid 2.42 euros, or 8.9 percent, to 24.70 euros in Vienna after dropping as much as 19 percent earlier.

Leisure & Gaming Plc, which owns betting brands including VIPsports, declined 25.5 pence, or 35 percent, to 48 pence in London and closed at the day's lowest price. 888 Holdings Plc, the largest online casino operator, fell 27 pence, or 16 percent, to 144 pence. World Gaming dropped 27.5 pence, or 30 percent, to 64.5 pence.

The U.S. government views Internet gambling as illegal under a 1961 law that bars the use of telephone lines to make interstate wagers. Sports betting triggered the only case in which someone has been tried and jailed in the U.S. for running an illegal Web gambling business, Greg Harris, an analyst at Canaccord Adams in London, said when Carruthers was charged.

NFL Season

Dicks, whose detention was announced on the same day that the U.S. National Football League starts its season, was visiting the U.S. for reasons unrelated to Sportingbet, the company said in the statement. Betonsports' Carruthers was detained in Dallas while changing planes on a trip.

Along with Carruthers, the Betonsports indictment named people including company founder Gary Kaplan, who allegedly has not paid federal wagering excise taxes on more than $3.3 billion in bets taken from the U.S. The indictment seeks the forfeiture of $4.5 billion from Kaplan and other co-defendants.

Dicks became non-executive chairman of Sportingbet.com Plc, as the company was known, in January 2000 and also is chairman of Daniel Stewart Securities Plc.

Jay Cohen, the former president of online bookmaker World Sports Exchange, is the only person to be jailed for running an illegal Internet gambling business in the U.S. He was among 14 people charged in March 1998 and was convicted in February 2000. Cohen unsuccessfully appealed his 21-month sentence all the way to the Supreme Court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Weeks in London at dweeks1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 7, 2006 12:27 EDT