Christian Lusardi, the 42-year-old maker of fake poker chips, is scheduled to be sentenced at a hearing scheduled for March 30.
Lusardi had introduced a number of fake chips in the opening event of the Borgata Winter Open of last year, a $500 buy-in NL Hold’em tournament. The event had to be later cancelled as the organizers realized that there were fake chips in play. Lusardi later tried to flush the fake chips down a toilet, thus blocking the hotel’s sewer pipes.
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A few days after the organizers of the Borgata Winter Open cancelled the tournament, law-enforcement officials nabbed Lusardi as the guilty party.
After being arrested, he was taken to the Atlantic Country Justice Facility and a bail of $300k was set on him. He later signed a plea agreement with his prosecutors with regard to the counterfeit poker chip case, which was later resolved so that he could be prosecuted for the more serious charge of pirating DVDs.
Lusardi had to give up his passport and is permitted to travel only to New Jersey and North Carolina. He was charged with infringing copyright in February after a raid revealed over 37,000 pirated DVDs in his house at Fayetteville. Ever since the middle of 2012, the authorities were keeping an eye on him, especially after he received a number of fake DVDs from China. Lusardi reportedly made a profit of around $1 million from pirated DVDs.
He has pleaded guilty to copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit labels. Originally, the judge was to have sentenced him on January 6, but his lawyers requested the sentencing to be postponed so that they could further research his case.
The sentencing was then scheduled for February 18, but was further postponed to March 30 as James C. Fox, a senior US district judge, approved a motion that says: “The Motion Picture Association of America, who represents the victims of Defendant’s criminal activity, has not completed its victim impact statement. The USPO requires the victim impact statement to finalize the U.S. Sentencing Guideline calculations and determine the amount of restitution Defendant owes. A representative of the Motion Picture Association of America has assured the Government that it is expediting the completion of its statement, which it will forward to USPO.”
Lusardi’s lawyers as well as Mark K. Parker, the senior probation officer, and Susan B. Menzer, who is Lusardi’s prosecutor agreed to this motion.
