Black Friday sites given rest of month for civil suit response
Full Tilt, Pokerstars and Absolute Poker given until 31 October to respond to the amended civil complaint.
Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and “The PokerStars Companies” have all been given until 31 October to respond to the amended civil complaint brought against them by US authorities.
This extension follows Assistant Attorney Michael Lockard’s amendments on 20 September, when FTP board members Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and Rafe Furst were added to the list of defendants. The companies defined as “The PokerStars Companies” are PokerStars, PYR Software, Rational Entertainment Enterprises, Sphene and Stelekram.
Judge Leonard B Sand signed the relevant orders on 29 September, also including in them a deadline of 31 October for those concerned to make claims with regards to the assets sought by US authorities in September’s forfeiture claim, and they were filed on the same day.
In the related United States v Scheinberg et al federal indictment, defendants Chad Elie and John Campos both filed motions for dismissal on Friday, while last week also saw Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar make his first appearance in the civil suit, making claims to selected property and personal and corporate bank accounts.
Meanwhile a number of groups and individuals have publicly filed claims to assets listed as belonging to PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker. Kentucky cabinet member J Michael Brown has made a claim for dot.com domain names belonging to the three operators, stating that “The Commonwealth [of Kentucky] avers that it was at the time of the filing of the complaint, and still is, the true and bona fide sole owner of the property.”
The Commonwealth of Kentucky previously attempted to seize the PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com and AbsolutePoker.com domains in 2008, as well as 138 others, after alleging that the sites in question constituted “illegal gambling devices”.
In addition, Florida-based company Cardroom International “ which runs a free online poker site financed by advertising revenue “ has filed a claim of its own.
It hopes to demonstrate a claim to up to US$30m held in bank accounts tied to Bitar, Lederer and Ferguson, as well as a fourth in the name of Furst’s Telamonian Ajax Trust and further seized funds present or future belonging to Full Tilt, Pokerstars, or individual defendants related to those two parties.
Cardroom International’s claim sees the company suggest that “The claim of the United States is limited to the gross proceeds of the activities occurring a year before the relevant versions of the civil forfeiture complaints was filed. All excess amounts seized…should be made available to creditors of the named defendants.”