Westmoreland County attorney Larry Burns refuses to fold and insists his for-profit poker tournaments are legal in Pennsylvania.
But it wasn't in the cards Tuesday for him to get back more than $11,000 in cash confiscated by police this summer.
Attorney Larry Burns told a judge yesterday that money he earned from organizing Texas Hold'em tournaments in Seward and Hempfield was not the proceeds of an illegal activity.
The 63-year-old Burns was charged earlier this year with misdemeanor gambling counts for running tournaments for a profit. Authorities confiscated about $11,000 in cash during raids of the Seward Volunteer Fire Department and Burns' Derry Township home in August.
Prosecutors agreed to return to Burns about $2,000 in cash seized from his bedroom as well as nine books about poker and gambling.
During yesterday's hearing, Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr. prohibited District Attorney John Peck from referring to the poker tournaments as gambling.
Burns admitted to running the games for profit but has insisted that doing so is not a crime because poker is not gambling under state law. Instead, it is a game of skill and not a game of chance.
"Whether you win or lose, it's based essentially in the cards you are dealt and that's by chance," Peck said. "It meets the definition of gambling."
State police Cpl. Robert Erdely testified that the Seward fire company earned about $26,000 from the games. Records indicate that Burns and the Seward department split the profits from the poker games, Erdely said.
Burns said his poker tournaments, which had been advertised through road signs and over an Internet Web site, are now out of business.
"If he is acquitted of a crime and there is a ruling that poker is not an illegal activity then, yes, he will be back in business," said attorney David Millstein, who represents Burns.
Burns initially sought the return of about $11,000 in cash as well as his poker paraphernalia, but agreed to drop the request when authorities offered to give back the money taken from his home. The rest of the cash had been confiscated from a poker dealer at the Seward game.
That money -- as well as tens of thousands of poker chips, poker tables and other records taken during the searches --- will be kept in custody and used as evidence against Burns.
Police contend Burns made about $31,000 in profits from the Seward tournaments, in addition to an undisclosed amount from weekly poker games in Hempfield.
Burns is expected to appear face a preliminary hearing in November.
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