Home / Poker News December 2012 / Howard Lederer Reaches Settlement with DoJ
Howard Lederer Reaches Settlement with DoJ
Posted by: Randy Williams - Wed, 2012-12-19 11:14
With former Full Tilt officials settling their civil cases with the DoJ one after the other, and with the site back online as if nothing had ever happened, the time for Howard Lederer - seen by many as the main culprit behind the
online poker meltdown - to settle too has come.
He was one of the Full Tilt directors named in the civil complaint filed by the DoJ in September 2011. According to the said complaint, he owed a total of $42.5 million to the government, funds the origins of which could be traced back to his illegal activities at Full Tilt Poker. In November 2011, Lederer filed a motion to dismiss the charges brought by the said complaint, arguing that none of the funds named had been illegally obtained.
On December 18, 2012, he decided to settle with the DoJ, forfeiting a number of his assets acquired during the time when the DoJ alleged that Full Tilt Poker was run like an international Ponzi scheme.
According to the settlement, Lederer had agreed to forfeit the following assets: his 1965 Shelby Cobra Roadster, all funds in an account he had opened at an Isle of Man bank as well as all the funds that can be traced to that account. He’s also given up his 401 as well as various other accounts at LPL Financial. All the money he obtained from the sale of a Las Vegas propriety of his will also find its way into the Feds’ coffers. $30k resulting from the sale of another Las Vegas propriety of his has also been forfeited. A third Las Vegas propriety, located at 309 Kingsclear Court was also included in the settlement.
For money laundering, he was fined $1.25 million. Many of the assets pointed out in the Amended Civil Complaint were not mentioned in the settlement.
