An attorney for Howard Lederer has refiled a motion to dismiss a civil complaint against Lederer, in response to an updated version of the government’s case that included additional allegations against the former Full Tilt Poker board president.
The refiling of the motion to dismiss was made necessary by the additional allegations against Lederer. Lederer had originally filed a motion to dismiss in July of 2012, with this revised motion superseding the earlier effort.
In September, the Department of Justice filed its second amended civil complaint. In addition to previous allegations, it used the Travel Act to claim proceeds derived from unlawful activities are subject to forfeiture.
This second complaint lists millions of dollars worth of Lederer-owned assets, paid for with funds derived from Full Tilt.
“There is probable cause to believe that the Defendant Properties constitute, or are traceable to, property used in illegal gambling businesses,” it alleges.
The latest version of the motion to dismiss, filed by Lederer attorney Elliot R. Peters of the San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest LLP, retains much of the language included in Lederer’s July motion, including assertions that the charges against Lederer were “threadbare” and lacked extensive factual support.
Since then, significant evidence has emerged confirming further Lederer’s explicit knowledge of the financial difficulties facing the company, most of which is ignored in the motion, which denies the validity of each of the statutes being used against Lederer and defers any actual blame onto Ray Bitar, Full Tilt’s CEO.
The revised motion to dismiss attacks the length of the complaint itself, writing in its introduction, “The SAC [Second Amended Complaint] is so structurally complex that it takes a cartographer to understand what is being alleged and against whom.”
Despite Peters’ complaint, however, the length of a given legal complaint has little relevance to a complaint’s validity.
