LOS ANGELES — The estranged husband of a Camarillo woman stabbed to death in a Century City parking garage last month lost a round Friday in his federal case, when a judge refused to release money his attorney said was necessary to preserve evidence that could exonerate him.

U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez said there was no evidence to show that the complex computer network used by James Fayed's money transmitting business held information that could clear the Moorpark man. With that determination, he turned down the defenses request for government to release $300,000 to maintain the computer system.

"It seems more like it's preserving a business rather than preserving data," Gutierrez said about the defense motion.

Fayed was charged by federal prosecutors with operating that business without a license a week after Pamela Fayed, 45, of Camarillo was killed. The couple had co-owned the business, Goldfinger Coin & Bullion, Inc, which was also named in the one-count indictment. Their affiliate company, E-Bullion.com, was not named.

Gutierrez's decision, however, did leave the door open for the defense to revise the request and file it again. Fayed's attorney, Mark Hathaway, said all options would be considered.

"We're planning on doing whatever it takes to preserve the evidence that show's the defendants are innocent and allows for depositors to make claims on their funds," Hathaway said after the hearing in downtown Los Angeles.

The Web site, E-Bullion.com, allowed depositors to hold precious metals in on-line accounts backed by gold and silver bullion, according to court documents. The Web site used "state-of-the-art computer security to ferret out fraud and suspicious activity," the documents state.

The system helped identify a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who applied for an account, which led the Fayeds to forward the information to Department of Homeland Security and brief officials with the National Security Agency in Camarillo, according to the defendants' status conference report.

The money, which was a portion of the money seized by federal investigators working on the case, would be used to preserve evidence, such as e-mails, audit trails, transaction histories and other electronic records and data on servers and computer network system, Hathaway said.

But a breakdown of how the money would be spent raised questions for Gutierrez; he also questioned if the defense knew for sure there was information on the computers that would exonerate Fayed.

"I still don't have an understanding of what will it take to do it, who is going to do it" Gutierrez said, adding later, "You (Hathaway) believe there's exculpatory evidence in this data or you don't know."

Federal prosecutor Mark Aveis also argued that there was a lack of evidence for unfreezing the seized money.