Presiding over a hearing today in Manhattan engineered by the lawyers of two of the lower-profile defendants in the case – Chad Elie and John Campos - Kaplan also said the chances of dismissal of the cases are slim.
“I think it extraordinarily unlikely the entire indictment will be dismissed,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said at the hearing, according to the report in Bloomberg Business Week.
Elie and Campos filed their motions for dismissal back in October claiming the charges levied against them on Black Friday weren’t actually applicable.
As to the UIGEA and Wire Act charges of offering online gambling services against federal law, the two are claiming poker doesn’t technically fall under either Act as it is primarily a game of skill and "not a gambling business."
As for the separate charges of bank fraud and money laundering, the claim is that no bank was harmed in the process so no fraud had occurred.
Judge Kaplan said he would rule later on the motion submitted by Elie and Campos and that a trial, if it comes to that, would start March 12.
Eleven defendants in total are included under the case of U.S. v. Scheinberg, 10-cr-00336, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Elie and Campos are the only defendants who have filed full motions to dismiss the charges
Lederer and Furst File Claims, US District Court Extends Deadline
Earlier this week both Howard Lederer and Rafe Furst joined Chris Ferguson in filing motions to claim seized bank accounts.
The US District Court for Southern New York also announced yesterday it has extended the deadline for Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker to respond to the amended complaint filed Sept. 21, 2011.
Each company now has until Jan. 2, 2012, to respond to the amended complaint which added Full Tilt Poker owners Lederer, Ferguson and Furst to the civil complaint and famously accused Full Tilt Poker of being a Ponzi scheme.
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