Update on Elie v. Ifrah lawsuit
The attorney for Chad Elie filed an amended complaint against Jeff Ifrah, Ifrah PLLC, and others yesterday in the District Court of Clark County, Nevada. Recall that the original complaint had some very serious allegations made as against Ifrah (none of which have been proved in court). The amended complaint has the same basic claims for relief, but expands upon some of the earlier allegations and offers some further particulars.
For example, paragraph 3 of the complaint now pleads that Ifrah is licensed as an attorney in the District of Columbia but not in Nevada, California, Florida, or Illinois, even though “he performed services for and provided legal advice to” Elie while Elie was in those jurisdictions. (Interestingly, however, it’s not specifically pleaded that Ifrah gave Elie Nevada, California, Florida, or Illinois legal advice.) Paragraph 7 is now explicit in introducing the client conflict that is a big part of Elie’s purported case: that Ifrah was conflicted in representing both PokerStars and Full Tilt (for whom he is alleged to have been rustling up processing solutions) and Elie (who was exposed to criminal sanction for providing those solutions). This doesn’t change much; the original complaint was clear on this point, but the amended version ties this characterization in earlier in the narrative and gives some additional factual basis for it.
Another new tidbit is the claim that Ifrah requested that Elie’s payments to him be characterized as payments for “consulting” services rather than legal services (see new paragraph 59). Ifrah is alleged to have done this so that he would not be conflicted out of representing criminal defendants when and if indictments for payment processing were handed down, as Ifrah expected, for example, like those coming out of the SDNY on Black Friday. (See new paragraphs 60 and 74.) Elie’s amended complaint states that Ifrah subsequently denied that he even acted for Elie in putting together Elie’s processing deals.
Assuming that the original complaint was served on or about April 11th, Ifrah and his firm appear to have 10 days to respond to the amended complaint after service.