What Is The Latest On The Full Tilt Poker Grand Jury Investigation?
April 22, 2010 8:53 amSince April 5th, when the the Financial Times’ Joe Menn broke a story alleging a grand jury investigation of Full Tilt Poker focusing on money laundering charges, the poker community has been searching for any information to either confirm or deny the story.
Despite there being no further information about the matter, this is hardly surprising seeing that grand jury investigations are sealed and anyone found leaking the information from the court is deemed to have violated the law.
However, an intriguing case which seems to shed some extra light on the matter is that of the concurrently running Lary Kennedy and Greg Omotoy v Full Tilt Poker, in which $80,000 was “confiscated” from their accounts after being accused of employing poker robots. As the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Cyrus Sanai explains:
“Defendants desire to seal [Sanai’s] ex parte motion for a continuance and early discovery. The grounds are that Plaintiffs’ motion discusses a grand jury investigating the Defendants…The grounds for a motion to seal are not only not met, the request is entirely frivolous and made in bad faith.”
If the stories are to be believed then top Full Tilt Poker pros including Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Howard Lederer could be indicted in the future for possible money laundering and gambling violations.
However, before that happens the grand jury investigations, which is a kind of pretrial, would require that 12 of the 16 to 23 individuals on the jury find probable cause that a crime was committed before indictments are issued.
The story is still in its early stages, and details surrounding the case are bound to be sketchy, but in the meantime its business as usual at Full Tilt Poker’s virtual felts.