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Woodland Hills School : Police Say Arrest of 2 Halts High School Betting Ring

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Times Staff Writer

A betting ring serving students at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills has been broken up with the arrest of the ring’s two leaders on suspicion of bookmaking, Los Angeles police said.

Police believe the bookmaking operation, allegedly run by a 22-year-old student from California State University, Northridge and a 17-year-old El Camino Real High School student, attracted about $10,000 in wagers on sporting events, Captain Bayan Lewis said Wednesday.

Police armed with search warrants arrested the two suspects in their Woodland Hills homes Monday, seizing betting records dating back to mid-November, Lewis said.

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Arrested were Cal State Northridge student Mark Leib and an El Camino senior who was not identified because of his age, he said.

The gambling service catered mostly to students at the Woodland Hills high school and took bets of as much as $250, Lewis said. According to records seized in the raid, one 14-year-old bettor owed $1,000 when the ring was broken up.

Police said about 30 students at the high school, which has 2,600 students, wagered on professional football and basketball games, but that no bets were taken on high school games. Leib supervised the betting and the high school student collected money and distributed winnings on campus, Lewis said.

“Except for the fact that they kept records, they were very sophisticated in their gambling,” Lewis said. “Apparently they ran it out of their homes, taking a cut off the top.”

Lewis said police began investigating the ring several weeks ago, after receiving tips from informants. Judging from the records, he said, the pool involved “about 20 regular bettors, and about 10 on the periphery.” Bets on individual games ranged from $15 to $250, he said.

Search Warrants Obtained

After receiving the tips, police began checking phone records and interviewing students, Lewis said. Warrants to search the suspects’ homes were obtained on the day of the arrests, he said.

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Lewis said no cash was recovered during the searches. Although the one teen-ager who owed $1,000 was pressured to pay off his debt, police had turned up no evidence of coercion, he said.

Police said the high school student was suspended from school pending an investigation by school authorities. El Camino Real principal Lawrence J. Foster confirmed that disciplinary action had been taken against the student, but declined to elaborate, saying it would be “unfair to the student and his parents.”

Foster said police informed him of their investigation a week ago, but that school officials did not take part in the probe. He said he has no plans to discipline students who placed bets.

The principal played down the significance of the gambling operation, describing it as a error in judgment on the part of a single student.

“Among our 2,600 students we have the full range of human characteristics, including the ability to make mistakes.” he said. “Our task is to convert those mistakes into learning experiences.”

2nd Police Probe

This is the second police investigation at the Woodland Hills school in recent months. In December, 16 students were arrested on suspicion of selling marijuana, cocaine and LSD after an undercover police drug investigation.

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Lewis said Wednesday that the betting operation did not appear to have made its organizers much money. Business fell off considerably at the end of the football season, forcing Leib to pay expenses, such as his phone bill, with earnings from a part-time job at a precious metals recovery firm, he said. Police said that informants told them that, in January, Leib and his partner began accusing each other of skimming profits from the business.

Lewis said he expects no more arrests, although police are continuing their investigation.

Leib was released on $500 bail and the juvenile was released to the custody of his parents, Lewis said. Under state law, bookmaking is a felony punishable by fines and up to a year in state prison.

Parents of the bettors also were notified, Foster said.

Lewis said the ring did not appear to be part of larger operation.

“They were clean-cut kids,” he said. “They just got into the wrong enterprise.”

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