Okay everyone, let me clear a few things up.

I am not asking for pro bono legal work on my behalf. I realized once I saw the cops in the room that the money was gone. I have no illusions about being able to recover any of the money from that night. But I also had some time to think about the situation.

What I came up with is that if the cops were forced to document the evidence in a certain way, that would preserve the amount that the players were owed by the house, THE NEXT TIME THAT THE COPS RAID A CLUB, the players might have some recourse to recover their money.

However, the cops aren't going to do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Neither is the DA. If we as a group want to collectively attenpt to enforce what might be our rights in this situation, someone who knows what they're doing is going to need to go to court, fight with the DA, and try and get a court order to impose the necessary evidence collection rules on the cops. There is going to be no money in it for the lawyer who does this, so yes it would be pro bono for the benefit of the poker playing community in NYC (it might be worth some publicity, for a lawyer who seeks such). However, there seem to be alot of lawyers playing poker here. As I said before maybe one of them is pissed off enough about the situation to do something about it.

Now some people on this thread have said there is no chance for this to work. This is quite possible, maybe even likely. Then again, we've all played hands that were longshots to make. Maybe someone could get lucky.