Lodge Card Club Raided / Grand Jury does not indict any Lodge employees

I don't see any reason why he would pay anyone before the conclusion of the legal proceedings. In fact, doing so would probably be legally inadvisable.

He is waiting for the conclusion of this situation. If it ends with The Lodge being unable/unwilling to compensate players, then he has vouched he will do so. But he is following his attorneys advice and unfortunately this legal situation needs to play out, which is going to take time.

Don’t get hung up on the idea of filing charges. State only files charges if they see a need to penalize an individual.

TABC can use TX gambling statutes in their administrative proceedings except they a) only need to meet a preponderance of evidence standard vs reasonable doubt and b) avoid The whole issue and risk of testing law argunents in front of a jury. They can keep the law argument in front of law people. A judge can disagree with a law but still enforce it as a law. Juries can more easily just ignore a law they don’t like.

The point is TABC/state have multiple advantages to stay outside of the criminal courts and no real need. Even if they do want to press criminal charges, they can resolve all or most of the law arguments before getting into criminal court and then only deal with fact questions before the jury. Then even if they lose on the facts, the decision on the law remains

All charges dropped. Lodge reopening as quickly as possible per Doug’s post on IG. LFG!!!!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

GREAT NEWS!

This is democracy manifest

Good. I'd be looking for an angle to counter for the massive inconvenience.

What's the guess on total damages?

I know civil asset forfeiture laws are backwards and it'd be nearly impossible.

TABC issuing 4 new liquor licenses to other Texas Rooms one month prior, basically confirmed the business model.

Then the next month they raid and shut down The Lodge on a suspicion? Unnecessary and targeted imo.

The legal geniuses in this thread sure must be disappointed lol

Obv no way to prove, but I imagine the right palms got greased. I’m glad people will get their money back.

This guy in particular will surely come back and do an apology tour.

Dont poke the fire. Poking the fire just creates noise and future headaches.
Be happy you can re-open and re-build.

Agree, good to see a positive outcome.

Maybe we will hear something from Neeme and Owen now who were noticeably silent and basically disappeared during this whole fiasco.

This is one way to clarify the law. Probably the worst way that wrecked a lot of little people.

Best way is legislature could clarify the law.
Next best way is AG could make an opinion and clubs keep operating while courts decide and if they decide against the clubs with a known date they need to stop operating by.
Worst way is just go steal all the shit from a single club and try to make it stick.

Both of them made videos and stated they knew nothing other than what the public knew and would not be discussing the events during an ongoing investigation/legal battle.

You really want people in the middle of a legal battle with the state to give up their rights and go against the most common sense, straightforward legal advice possible?

Yeah, why would these guys listen to their attorneys and stfu when told to instead of providing you updates on the interwebs? They are such idiots!

Waiting for all the haters who were posting "has Doug paid anyone back yet?"

When people are being named by the state for potential prosecution you want them to come on the internet and potentially incriminate themselves to soothe your own uncertainty or give you some drama to take in for the day?

Hawkins is a perfect example of why you stay silent during this ****.

One of the first things that attorneys tell their clients in this type of situation is not to say anything. This way if anything needs to be said the attorneys will address it.

Look up the word "opinion" in the dictionary. Opinions don't have to be right. It will save you a lot of copying-pasting in the future.

Apologize for what exactly?

I was not claiming I had inside knowledge that the Lodge was guilty of money laundering.

My point, going back years, was that this gray-area model created obvious regulatory and financial-compliance risk, and that one day authorities could use those angles to raid a room, freeze funds, and create chaos for players and employees.

That is exactly what happened.

If you want to say the later no bill means the state overreached, fine. But that does not change the fact that the core risk I was talking about was real. People’s money got tied up, the room got shut down, and the whole thing turned into the kind of mess I said could happen.

There’s a feature on the forum that allows you to multiquote just by pressing a plus sign. So it was pretty trivial for me to do so.