Last week, attorneys for Full Tilt Poker front man Howard Lederer filed a motion requesting a status conference with the U.S. Department of Justice after a Federal court ruling found that poker is not considered illegal gambling under the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA).Lederer's legal counsel bluntly stated, "The core of the Government’s allegations in this case is that online real money poker violates IGBA." If that weren't true, and online poker were permissible under IGBA, then "much of the Government’s case here, and many of the seizures which have already been authorized, will no longer have a legal basis."
In order to make their argument, and solicit a response from the DOJ, Lederer's lawyers asked for a meeting with the Feds: "We would welcome the opportunity to appear before your honor at the court’s earliest convenience to discuss how most sensibly to manage this litigation going forward in light of the DiCristina opinion." The attorneys for Rafe Furst and Chris Ferguson (pictured) piggybacked on the motion and also requested a status conference with the DOJ.One day after Lederer's letter was filed on August 28th, the DOJ responded. United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, the driving force behind the Black Friday indictments of 2011, wrote in part, "The Government respectfully disagrees with many of the conclusions reached in the DiCristina order. The proper forum for addressing the merit and impact, if any, of that order in this action would be for Lederer, Furst, and Ferguson to argue in any motions to dismiss [and] what persuasive weight the DiCristina order should be given, and for the Government to respond."
After calling a status conference "premature and unworkable," Bharara argued that the IGBA interpretation "does not address the other statutory claims that have been, or will be, alleged by the Government in this action… In other words, even if this court were to find the DiCristina order persuasive, which we do not think it should, it would not impact any of the claims asserted in this action."
The DiCristina ruling came 10 days ago. In it, Senior United States District Judge Jack Weinstein argued to dismiss charges levied against Lawrence DiCristina "on the grounds that a poker room does not fall under the definition of an illegal gambling business prescribed by the Federal statute [IGBA] because poker is predominantly a game of skill rather than chance."Weinstein added, "Because the poker played on the defendant's premises is not predominantly a game of chance, it is not gambling as defined by the IGBA." The 120-page ruling from Weinstein included an expansive mathematical discussion of why poker is a game predominated by skill rather than chance. It came just eight months after the DOJ clarified that the Wire Act of 1961, another major Federal law governing gambling, by saying it only applied to online sports betting.
Last September, the DOJ charged Lederer, Ferguson, and Furst with operating a global Ponzi scheme. The Feds argued, "Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited."
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