By Pete Brush

Law360, New York (March 17, 2021, 5:39 PM EDT) -- Manhattan U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff urged federal prosecutors to increase their pace Wednesday as their presentation of evidence against two men on trial for allegedly fooling banks into processing $150 million worth of transactions for federally illegal cannabis lasted into a third week.

The uneasy judge, who has excused two jurors over COVID-19 concerns, urged prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office to find a higher gear, having cut short their examination of a witness whose testimony delved again into the intricacies of credit card and debit transactions.

Hamid Akhavan and Ruben Weigand are accused by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office of depriving banks of property rights, tricking them into handling federally illegal transactions on behalf of Eaze, the San Francisco-based marijuana delivery service, from 2016 until 2019. Big companies including Visa, Mastercard, Citibank and Bank of America allegedly were duped by an elaborate system of fake websites and third-party companies that masked weed transactions, although none of the financial giants lost any money.

Over more than two weeks since March 1 opening arguments, the jury has heard often-repetitive testimony from witnesses called by the government from those companies and others. The plodding pace caused Judge Rakoff on Tuesday afternoon to halt the direct testimony of Visa's Martin Elliott, a vice president in charge of risk management, at the end of the trial day.

On Wednesday morning, the judge pressed for specifics about how much more time the government would need.

"I want to tell the jury at the end of the day ... what the schedule is," Judge Rakoff said.

He then directed defense counsel to put a 45-minute cap on their cross-examinations of Martin, who appeared via video, saying, "As you know from yesterday, you won't get ..."

"It's over at 46 [minutes], yes," interjected Akhavan counsel William Burck.

The warnings followed a Monday shot across the bow from Judge Rakoff, who also was not pleased at the length of time it took for the government to get former Eaze CEO James Patterson — who also spoke at length about the transactions process, among other things — on and off the witness stand.

"We are not proceeding with alacrity and things are bogging down," the judge said, though he gave the government leeway allowing that Patterson had been deemed an important witness.

Taken together, his comments clearly signaled that more leeway was unlikely — especially since the court is now down to a jury of 12 with no alternates amid the ongoing virus threat.

The government is on track to rest Thursday. Barring a seemingly unlikely decision by either or both of the defendants to testify, the defense was planning an estimated daylong presentation.

At the end of the day, Judge Rakoff told the jury the trial was running "a little later" than an anticipated three weeks in total.

"The case will probably be yours late on Tuesday," he said.

Akhavan is represented by William Burck, Christopher Tayback and Sara Clark of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Ira Rothken and Jared Smith of the Rothken Law Firm LLP.

Weigand is represented by Michael Gilbert, Shriram Harid, Steven Pellechi and Amy Lesperance of Dechert LLP and by Michael Artan of Michael H. Artan PC.

The government is represented by Nicholas Folly, Tara La Morte and Emily Deininger of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

The case is U.S. v. Weigand, case number 1:20-cr-00188, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

--Editing by Marygrace Murphy.

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