Federal Judge Won’t Dismiss 'Black Friday' Online Poker Charges

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday refused requests to dismiss all the government’s counts against John Campos, a former vice-chairman of a St. George, Utah bank that allegedly accepted cash infusions on behalf of three major online poker companies:  PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and UB.com/Absolute Poker.   Another payment processor, Chad Elie, is also charged and set to go on trial with Campos next month. 

The defendants were charged on April 15 of last year with money laundering and bank fraud.  They argued that poker is not gambling, something Judge Kaplan dismissed.

Kaplan had already stated that it would be “extraordinarily unlikely that the entire indictment will be dismissed.”

The decision also keeps intact all counts for eight defendants including two executives each from the three major online poker firms that have since exited the US market. 

From Forbes.com:

Judge Kaplan did poke holes in some of the arguments made by big shot lawyers like former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement on behalf of Campos and Elie at the December pre-trial hearing. For example, Kaplan said that even if Campos and Elie argued they were only financial transaction providers they might not be exempt from violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act if they had knowledge of bets and were controlled by unlawful online gambling firms.

Judge Kaplan called the argument that poker is not gambling “surprising” and said that Campos and Elie will need to defend at trial the government’s claims that they violated the Illegal Gambling Business Act. “It would be inappropriate,” Kaplan wrote, to dismiss any count “for lack of proof at this point in time.”

- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher