Dynasty, US govt in settlement talks

The owner of Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino and the U.S. government are exploring a possible agreement to settle the criminal case against Tinian Dynasty.

According to the minutes of a pretrial conference and motion hearing on Friday, attorney Patrick J. Smith, counsel for Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Dynasty Investments Ltd., informed the U.S. District Court for the NMI that the parties are talking of a possible settlement deal.

At the conference Friday morning, Smith asked the court for a recess until that afternoon due to their ongoing settlement talks.

This prompted U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona to move the conference to 1:30pm that same day.

At the conference, attorney Bruce Berline appeared as co-counsel for Smith.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Marivic David and Ross Naughton appeared for the U.S. government. U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division special agent Todd Peterson also attended the conference.

On Thursday, Manglona ordered the clerk of court to randomly select 60 prospective jurors from a jury pool to appear for next month’s trial in the criminal case filed against Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investments Ltd.

Manglona said there are 98 prospective jurors in the jury pool.

The jury trial is set for Feb. 9, 2015, at 8am.

The U.S. government filed in November 2014 a second superseding indictment that contains 158 criminal charges against Hong Kong Entertainment (Overseas) Investment Ltd.

The charges are one count of conspiracy to cause a financial institution to fail to file a currency transaction report or CTR, 155 counts of failure to file a CTR, one count of failure to file a suspicious activity report, and one count of failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. The indictment also has a notice of forfeiture.

The initial indictment had charged HKE and then-VIP services manager George Que and then-casino manager Tim Blyth with only 10 charges. Que and Blyth had entered into a settlement deal with the U.S. government in exchange for dropping the criminal charges against them.

HKE recently hired former federal prosecutor and now New York lawyer Patrick J. Smith of the law firm DPL Piper as Berline’s co-counsel in the case.

According to the indictment, HKE allowed gamblers at Tinian Dynasty to conduct transactions involving more than $10,000 without filing CTRs with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network from September 2009 to April 25, 2013.

Tinian Dynasty allegedly failed to file about 3,640 CTRs for cash transactions over $10,000 as required by law. The total dollar amount of reportable currency transactions that were not filed is about $1.38 million.