KUALA LUMPUR: A United States federal judge has recommended tossing out evidence against a Malaysian man and his son over their alleged running of an illegal sports betting operation run out of the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the United States.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Monday that magistrate Judge Peggy Leen found that “false and misleading statements” were made by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in a sworn affidavit they submitted in seeking a judge’s permission to search on July 9 last year the villa that Paul Phua Wei Seng and his son occupied.

The judge said that the search warrant affidavit was “fatally flawed” and lacked probable cause to support the search, the newspaper reported.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the prosecutors were now reviewing Leen’s findings and they have 14 days to respond. They also have the option of objecting to the judge’s recommendations with the US district judge presiding over the case.

The FBI agents had cut Internet service to the premises on July 5, and then posed as computer technicians to enter the residence. They failed to disclose that visit to the premises in getting authorisation for the July 9 raid, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Leen said the failure to disclose the ruse was the only “material omission” in the search warrant affidavit.

She said the magistrate who approved the search warrant should have been given that information to help her determine whether agents had demonstrated probable cause for the July 9 search.

However, in a separate decision also filed on Monday, Leen said the FBI agents were within their authority to carry out the ruse as technicians when the Phuas allowed them into the villa.

Leen said the Phuas were “tricked”, but “assumed the risk” when they let the agents inside the villa. Cell- phones, computers, iPads and other electronic equipment were seized from the villa during the raid.

Phua’s counsel David Chesnoff and co-defence counsel Thomas Goldstein had argued that the search was unconstitutional. Chesnoff hailed the judge’s finding that the search warrant was flawed as a “triumph for citizens everywhere”.

Phua, 50, and his son, Darren, 22, were among eight defendants charged in the multimillion-dollar betting scheme during the FIFA World Cup in 2014.

Leen also said in one of her decisions that the FBI had failed to explain in the affidavit how they knew that Phua was a member of the notorious Hong Kong-based 14K triad.

Phua’s case has attracted wide media attention in Malaysia, after it was leaked that Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had written to the FBI in December to clear him of links with the 14K triad. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on February 4, 2015.