Attorneys for 7 ask state for evidence

Attorneys for seven Las Vegas residents accused of running a multimillion-dollar money-laundering service for illegal Internet gambling operations out of Draper say federal prosecutors are dragging their feet in providing them with the evidence against their clients.

Defense attorneys for the seven complained during a status conference Monday that although their clients were indicted on charges of racketeering, bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering last May, they have yet to be provided with any documents or evidence by federal prosecutors and therefore are unable to build their defense.

Attorneys told U.S. District Court Judge Paul Cassell that they are waiting for more than 100,000 pages of documents and said a motion deadline two months from now would not give them reasonable time to read through all of the evidence.

Baron Lombardo, Count Lombardo, Richard Cason-Selman, Henry Bankey, Tina Hill, Frank Lombardo and Kimberlie Lombardo are all charged in a 34-count indictment with running an elaborate laundering service to scrub clean illegal Internet gambling proceeds using a series of overseas bank accounts and computer servers that were fed into several Utah-based companies.

Federal prosecutors allege that the group processed more than $150 million in gambling proceeds between 2000 and 2007. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marty Woelfle said their evidence consists of 25 computer disks, 36 boxes of documents seized at offices in Draper, eight central processing units and eight computer hard drives. Woelfle said prosecutors plan to finish scanning in all documents and providing the data to the defense attorneys sometime next month.

Federal agents say U.S.-based gambling patrons would place bets on illegal gambling Web sites that offered gambling games and sporting-event betting. The bets were then forwarded to servers located in Antigua, Jamaica, Korea and other countries. These servers would then forward transactions to Gateway Technologies and Hill Financial Services Inc. out of Draper, where the funds were laundered through a series of Visa and Master Card transactions under miscellaneous purchase codes. The laundered funds were then sent back to Internet gaming site owners, while other transactions were funneled through contacts in the Philippines via Western Union wire transfers, according to charging documents.

Federal prosecutors have said the group chose to run the alleged operation out of Utah because they believed Las Vegas would be too obvious a location.

Defense attorneys indicated Monday they plan to file a motion to have the trial venue changed, possibly to Las Vegas.

Cassell said he plans to deal with the venue motion and other motions during the next hearing on Nov. 13.

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