Full Tilt owners file motions to dismiss civil claims

Posted by Steve Ruddock on Jul 11, 2012 Posted in Poker News | No Comments »

On Monday a slew of motions in the civil cases against Full Tilt Poker owners calling for the dismissal of all civil charges were filed. These filings were not unexpected as a deadline for such filings was on the horizon, and according to law experts are common in civil cases of this nature. In addition to the filings by Furst, Lederer, and Ferguson, there was a fourth filing by a company owned by Furst, Telamonian Ajax Trust.

All three Full Tilt Poker owners named in the civil indictments issued in the aftermath of Black Friday, Rafe Furst, Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson filed motions to dismiss charges, stating that “The government’s claim that Lederer defrauded and conspired to defraud FTP players is devoid of specific factual allegations and fails to satisfy Rule 9(b).”

Lederer’s Memorandum was the most detailed of the three, going on to cite the following arguments for dismissal of the case:

* The single statement implicating Lederer in the First Amended Complaint is insufficient under Rule 9(b) because it fails to identify the speaker, specify the precise statement at issue, and support an inference of fraudulent intent.

* The government never links Lederer to any of the other allegedly false statements referenced in the First Amended Complaint.

* The Fourth Claim for Relief in rem should be dismissed because the government’s wire fraud allegations fail to satisfy Rule 9(b).

* The government’s IGBA claim is based on an impermissible extraterritorial application of the law, and fails to allege facts supporting an IGBA violation.

* IGBA does not apply extraterritorially to FTP, a company based and operated outside of the United States.

* Even if IGBA applies to FTP’s conduct, the First Amended Complaint fails to sufficiently allege a violation of IGBA.

It will be interesting to see if the recently surrendered Ray Bitar is working with the US government, and possibly providing information that would dispute the claims of the three; or if Furst, Lederer, and Ferguson were simply unaware of the financial shortfalls at the company.

You can find all the motions of dismissal as well as memorandum’s at the following link (scroll down towards the bottom): http://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2011cv02564/377900/

 

Later in the day PokerStars filed their own motion to dismiss (read about that here) which reads very much like the motions filed by Ferguson, Lederer, and Furst, as did US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara who filed a motion to dismiss two class action lawsuits currently pending against Full Tilt Poker.

 

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