A Bexar County, Texas judge has issued an arrest order for one of the co-owners of the shuttered San Antonio Poker Palace after the landlord of the venue claimed that the club's co-owner, Richard Florestan, had violated a restraining order and broken into the club to remove equipment.
State District Judge Christine Hortick also ordered that Florestan appear in her court this Friday to show why Florestan shouldn't be held in contempt for entering the closed club. The property's owner, CPRK, an affiliate of Caprock Investments, had obtained a restraining order barring Florestan, co-club owner Christopher Aarons, and their representatives from entering the club.
CPRK is also seeking at least $250,000 from the San Antonio club's owners for months of unpaid rent and to cover the remodeling necessary to convert the club for a new commercial purpose.
The issue reached a boiling point a week ago Sunday when CPRK's property manager, Richard Mann, arrived at the venue to find that Florestan and another man had allegedly picked the lock, entered the closed poker club, and were loading equipment into a waiting van. Florestan allegedly refused to comply with Mann's demand that he leave the premises, and instead continued to remove equipment.
San Antonio police arrived a few hours later, and even though Florestan was again advised of the restraining order, according to Mann, he still refused to leave and continued loading equipment into the van. That led Mann to file for an emergency order for contempt of court last Tuesday, which was granted by Judge Hortick.
Former San Antonio Poker Palace co-owner Aarons had filed a notice in response to CPRK's earlier lawsuit declaring that he and Florestan had parted ways in November of 2021 and that he was no longer an owner of the club or responsible for its operations.
The San Antonio Poker Palace closed in May after refusing to pay out a $100,000 bad-beat jackpot hit at one of its tables in April. The club cited a technical violation of the jackpot's rules as cause to not pay out the $100,000, though similar minor violations in regulated poker states have rarely resulted in an upheld jackpot disqualification. Instead, the unusual non-building nature of the jackpot anecdotally supported widespread allegations from San Antonio-area players that no funds were available to pay out the jackpot.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, an attorney representing Florestan acknowledged receiving the TRO but questioned, in a response to the court, “whether the agents of SA Poker Palace committed such acts.” Florestan is also listed on Instagram and other sites as the president of another social-poker club in Texas, the Austin Poker Palace.
