Daryl Heller’s defense attorney says April trial date not possible given volume of evidence

• By Dan Nephin / LNP | LancasterOnline

Although a federal judge set an April trial date for Lancaster businessman Daryl Heller’s securities and wire fraud case, his defense attorney said there’s too much evidence to sift through for the trial to start then.

If he had to guess, Christopher Adams of the McCarter & English law firm said Friday, October of next year is more likely.

“It would be impossible to go to trial on an allegation of a $700 million fraud scheme that the government brought with the amount of discovery and documents that they were talking about getting,” said Adams, in a wide-ranging interview. “We don’t have it yet, but millions of pages — probably equal to the allegation of the fraud amount, if not double that.”

In setting the April 2026 date, the judge noted the government’s evidence includes about 5.6 million pages of documents.

Adams said he’s been in regular contact with the prosecution team on how best to go over evidence.

One thing that will have to happen, Adams said, is a separate set of federal attorneys — called a “filter team” or “taint team” — will go over the evidence seized so far to look for anything protected by attorney-client privilege so the prosecutors don’t see that information.

“As anyone could probably imagine, we communicate now by text message, phone, email. We have been engaged long before this indictment was returned, and in fact, we had been engaged with (the Department of Justice) long before the indictment was returned,” Adams said. “You can imagine, there was multiple communications between attorney and client and multiple attorneys. There were civil suits going on. There is a bankruptcy action.”

FBI agents arrested Heller at his East Hempfield Township home on Sept. 3. A 29-page criminal indictment said Heller knowingly defrauded his ATM investors of more than $400 million by operating what amounted to a Ponzi scheme – relying on new investors to pay off earlier ones, collapsing when the payouts became greater than the money coming in.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has also filed four civil claims against Heller. Both the indictment and the SEC filing outline steps Heller allegedly took to fabricate false financial reports.

In February, Heller filed for personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey where he owned a beach house. In August, a court-appointed examiner in the bankruptcy case detailed hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme in Heller’s ATM investment network, findings that were echoed in the subsequent criminal indictment and SEC complaint.

The cases derive from the collapse of companies Heller created, including Paramount Management Group, to buy ATMs with investors’ money and pay them returns from fees generated by the machines.

Heller has pleaded not guilty. He was released Sept. 5 on $500,000 unsecured bail.