Home / Poker News September 2012 / Howard Lederer Hit with New DoJ Complaint
Howard Lederer Hit with New DoJ Complaint
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2012-09-13 04:24
Full Tilt Poker’s Howard Lederer just doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break these days, although given his past deeds, one can’t really feel sorry for him. The ex-
online poker executive has been hit with yet another amended DoJ complaint, which alleges that he had acquired and funded assets with proceeds illegally obtained from Full Tilt Poker.
On September 10, the cogs of the legal system started turning again, and whenever that happens it’s usually bad news for Lederer and the other Full Tilt executives. The DoJ filed another Amended Civil Complaint, on top of the Black Friday documents, which has introduced new forfeiture charges against Lederer and Ray Bitar, naming various assets like houses and cars which were allegedly purchased with ‘dirty’ Full Tilt money.
The legal significance of the new complaint is rather far reaching, since it adds the 1952 Travel Act 18 U.S.C. to the criminal statute of the case against the Full Tilt executives, thus offering the DoJ another statute to back up its case in addition to the already employed Wire Act and IGBA.
The other interesting thing about the Complaint was that it listed the individual expenditures of the two defendants, Lederer and Bitar, going back all the way to 2006. Lederer had apparently built a house, for which he paid $3.6 million to a construction company, paid property taxes, funded mortgage payments and retirement funds and purchased a small fleet of luxury vehicles, all with illegally obtained money.
Bitar was busy piling up assets too: he purchased two homes in California. The Complaint seemed to focus on Bitar and Lederer only, as it didn’t provide similar expenditure details for the other defendants: Rafe Furst and Chris Ferguson.
The bottom line is that the DoJ is seeking $42.5 million in forfeited funds from Lederer and $42 million from Chris Ferguson. Bitar is expected to forfeit around $40.8 million, while Furst is in hot water for around $11 million.
