Witness in Jeremy Johnson trial questions himself: Do you recognize yourself?

"Mr. Riddle," the defense attorney asked the witness, "do you recognize Mr. Riddle?"

The question spurred laughter in the federal courtroom where Ryan Riddle is acting as his own attorney in a trial with co-defendants Jeremy Johnson and Scott Leavitt. Leavitt also worked at Johnson's online marketing company I Works in St. George.

Riddle's not-so-serious beginning to his own testimony Monday came as about 50 people, most from southern Utah, filled about half the seats in the Salt Lake City courtroom in a show of support for the defendants.

But it was Riddle's testimony that proved the highlight of the day as the trial on 86 charges mostly related to allegations of bank fraud entered its sixth week and now threatens to spill into next week.

The government has alleged that Riddle, Johnson and Leavitt schemed to obtain bank accounts to process credit cards by using nearly 300 companies that were set up using the names and personal information of I Works employees and family members. That was necessary, the government contends, because I Works' own bank accounts were shut down due to a large number of consumer credit card chargebacks.

Riddle decided to question himself as a witness while acting as his own attorney.

Sitting in the witness box, Riddle faced the jury and told members that I Works had experienced high levels of chargebacks because of a new client it took on, whose sales soared and then plunged, taking with it more than 90 percent of the company's revenues.

Then he said part of the response was to form the new companies to help weed out bad marketers who were using I Works systems. That, Riddle said, had been done at the direction of Andy Phillips, the owner of CardFlex, the California company that actually opened the accounts for I Works.

"Was it a perfect company?" Riddle asked himself about I Works' response.

"No."

"Did we do things that were not above board?"

"No."

At that point, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Kennedy objected to the line of questioning as argumentative, meaning it made an argument rather than stated facts.

"I'm arguing with myself," Riddle said as U.S. District Judge David Nuffer sustained the objection.

Leavitt had finished his testimony in the case earlier in the day.

Johnson, who also is acting as his own attorney and is expected to testify, asked Leavitt whether I Works was trying to hide that the new accounts for charging credit cards were actually associated with the St. George company.

"I believe that 100 percent we were following the advice that was given to us," Leavitt said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Lunnen focused much of his relatively short cross-examination on the use of a company owned by Leavitt and his brother to help process credit card payments prior to the time of alleged criminal offenses.

But Lunnen drew a rebuke when he asked Leavitt whether any of the processing funds actually went to Leavitt's company, implying that Leavitt was acting as a straw owner like those of the other companies formed by I Works.

"You destroyed my life. Why don't you ask me the hard questions?" Leavitt asked.

The defendants also called back to the stand Jamie Hipwell, an IRS special agent in criminal investigations who had earlier testified for the government about the allegations of money laundering.

Questions to Hipwell mostly focused on whether he had found evidence that I Works employees communicated at all with Wells Fargo Bank and also his findings about Phillips' role in the creation of the new companies for credit card processing.

At one point, Johnson asked Hipwell, "Do you believe Andy Phillips should have been indicted in this case?"

That prompted a government objection that was sustained by Nuffer.

People in the gallery on Monday said the crowd had shown up to support the defendants and register concern about how Nuffer was conducting the case, apparently after a plea from the defendants.

Over the course of the now six-week trial, Nuffer has excluded questions asked to witnesses by the defendants and sustained numerous objections from federal prosecutors about evidence the defense was trying to introduce.

Many of his decisions likely are related to Johnson and Riddle acting as their own attorneys. But Johnson and Riddle also have complained openly that Nuffer was not interacting with the prosecution in the same harsh manner he's treated the defense at times.

The judge also has had a number of verbal scrapes with attorney Marcus Mumford, who represents Leavitt, during which Nuffer threatened Mumford with a contempt-of-court finding on Friday when he called three timeouts to create momentary silence in the court.

tharvey@sltrib.com