News has just broke that Ray Bitar has been able to post bail and will be released from jail in the next 48 hours. Bitar will be able to move to California with family, but he’ll be electronically monitored. Initially the prosecution didn’t even want to allow bail to be granted to Bitar because they said he would be a flight risk, but Judge Freeman allowed bail to be granted.
In order to be granted bail yesterday Ray Bitar had to post a $2.5M personal recognizance bond. Bitar had to put up cash and a few different properties in order to post his bail. A total of five friends and family also backed the $2.5M bail. I’m sure Bitar will now try to make sure the trial takes as long as possible because he’s looking at a very long sentence.
The evidence against Bitar is mounting and it looks like Bitar’s time may be coming to an end. Apparently Bitar had paid himself roughly $2M in salary after Black Friday and that has come to light with the new indictment. Judge Freeman will be taking over the Bitar case it seems as well because Judge Kaplan was a former partner with the firm that’s defending Bitar (Paul Weiss).
US DoJ Stands Up for Brent Beckley
In other new stemming from the Black Friday indictments, the US DoJ has recently filed a court brief that defends Beckley and asks the judge to be lenient on him. Beckley headed the payment processing department at Absolute Poker and he has been in US custody since last year. Beckley was the 1st individual to turn himself into authorities after the Black Friday indictments.
In May Judge Kaplan had requested that Beckley’s sentence be longer than the 12-18 months that he was expected to receive at his sentencing. The US DoJ doesn’t think Brent should serve more than the maximum of 18 months and that’s why they’ve stood up for him by filing the court brief this week. Judge Kaplan hasn’t responded to the brief yet.
Beckley is expected to be back in court later this year for sentencing and he should end up receiving the suggested sentence of 12-18 months. Part of the reason Judge Kaplan wanted to increase the sentence for Beckley was because of the fact that there was so much money moving in and out of Absolute Poker, but the DoJ explained that some of the charges can’t be proven.
