U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands Designated Judge Robert Naraja set Reksid’s jury trial for July.
The defense and the prosecution agreed to file pretrial motions next month and the pretrial conference was set for June 21.
Reksid waived his right to a speedy trial from March 29 to July, the period he intends to leave Saipan to undergo medical treatment in Hawaii.
The federal court appointed Mark Hanson as Reksid’s counsel.
U.S. Assistant Attorney Eric O’Malley, who is prosecuting the case, did not object to Reksid’s medical plans.
Reksid appeared in federal court in time for his 4 p.m. arraignment yesterday with some family members offering him support.
According to the superseding indictment, Reksid borrowed up to $300,000 from his friends, associates and family members, claiming he needed the money to free up his huge deposits in a bank in New York.
He also told them he needed the money to pay for his wife’s medical bills.
But he didn’t have a bank account in New York and the medical expenses of his wife didn’t require a huge amount of money.
“He started borrowing money from his friends and associates and he wasn’t completely honest with them. In fact, he wasn’t honest with them at all where the money was going. He was sending the money to various locations to Africa via the wire service so that was the basis of the wire fraud charge,” O’Malley told the Variety.
Reksid was apparently dealing with some persons he met on the internet who were supposedly based in Ivory Coast and Nigeria who promised him a share in a quick-rich scheme.
The bribery charge stemmed from information that Reksid received a bribe of $3,000 from the owner and president of a business which had dealings with DPL, a semi-autonomous CNMI government agency receiving federal funds through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields grants.
