Lawyers for two men charged with facilitating the massive trade in online poker took aim at the government yesterday, insisting that Congress exempted financial institutions from liability for processing gambling monies and did not include poker in its definition of gambling.

Chad Elie and John Campos were among 11 people indicted in April in the prosecution of three of the world’s largest off-shore online poker companies: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.