Indian Bingo Hall Raided in Probe of Game-Fixing

The Barona Indians’ bingo hall was raided Thursday by 60 law enforcement officers searching for evidence that high-stakes bingo games were fixed to bleed off tens of thousands of dollars in prizes to predetermined winners, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said.

Investigators contend that the games were fixed so that prize money would go to favored players, or “shills,” who would later divvy up their illegal winnings with co-conspirators.

Thursday’s raid was coordinated with Las Vegas authorities, who searched the Las Vegas home and business office of Stewart Siegel, manager of the Barona bingo games for about a year until he left two months ago.

Elsewhere, authorities served at least two grand jury subpoenas on unnamed persons in Long Beach and in New Jersey, ordering them to appear before the San Diego County Grand Jury next month to testify on the bingo operations and on allegations of skimming.

No arrests were made during Thursday’s searches. Affidavits in support of the search warrants were issued--and then sealed--in San Diego and Clark County, Nevada, municipal courts.

The Barona Indians expressed mixed reactions to the search at their reservation, saying they welcomed the possibility that it might uncover criminal wrongdoing because their profits from the games had been disappointingly small. But they also suggested the raids might be a political move by Sheriff John Duffy to damage the reputation of the games, which Duffy has vocally opposed.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Tenwolde said the department, which is coordinating the probe, is “investigating grand theft accomplished by false pretenses through the placement of shills.” Tenwolde said he did not know how the games might be fixed, but speculated that it could be accomplished by incorrectly calling off the bingo letters and numbers to the advantage of people with predetermined playing cards.

“There is evidence that this (the use of shills) is going on, but I couldn’t even tell you it happened every night,” Tenwolde said. The amount of money at stake was “in the multiple thousands of dollars,” he added.

Neither Robert Dwyer, the current bingo manager and a former FBI agent, nor executives of the Los Angeles-based bingo management company, American Amusement and Management Co., could be reached for comment despite repeated calls placed to their offices. And telephone calls went unanswered at the Las Vegas home and business office of Stewart Siegel.

Siegel was not present during the searches, according to Sgt. Bill Keeton of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He described Siegel as a businessman who is licensed to work in the Las Vegas gaming industry and was a “mid-level” manager of a small casino there.

The Barona Indians were the first to offer the unrestricted and controversial reservation bingo games in California. The agreement between them and the management company calls for the reservation to receive 55% of the net proceeds. But since the games began in April, 1983, only about $500,000 has been turned over to the tribe, tribal manager Susan Osuna said Thursday.

The nightly games draw 500 to 900 people who pay an average of $25 to play; currently, guaranteed cash prizes total $15,000 to $25,000 nightly, bingo games employees said. The games employee about 150 people--most of them Barona Indians--and the weekly payroll is about $25,000, Osuna said.

“The band welcomes any investigation which may uncover evidence of criminal wrongdoing which may have cheated either the tribe itself or bingo players,” the tribal council said in a prepared statement.

But the Indians also said that records seized by authorities Thursday had previously been given to a federal grand jury, the FBI and investigators for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Nothing came of those probes, they said.

“The tribe suspects that the real motivation behind this well-publicized search is political, designed to discredit Indian bingo in general and the tribe’s games in particular,” the tribal council said.

“If the search yields evidence which leads to the arrest and conviction of those management personnel who may have cheated either the tribe or the players, then the tribe will thank the sheriff . . .

“However, if this disruptive raid produces no real results, then the tribe will have no choice but to condemn this search as no more than a purely politically motivated attempt by the sheriff to achieve through the back door what the federal courts have prohibited him from doing through the front door.”

That statement referred to a public threat by Duffy in December, 1982, to raid the Barona bingo games because of the high-stakes prizes, which far exceed the $250 limit allowed in charitable, non-Indian games.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Duffy by ruling that the issue of big-buck payoffs was a civil, not criminal, matter and therefore not in Duffy’s jurisdiction.

The feud between the Indians and Duffy has not diminished, however. During testimony before a congressional subcommittee in September in San Diego, Duffy said his office has evidence of organized crime involvement in Indian bingo. Tribal chairman Ed Welch countered, “We can keep the games clean and can keep our management company honest.”

But the tribe has been concerned about the dismal profits “and we attributed that to poor management,” said Osuna. “That’s why we fired both of our previous managers. This (Dwyer) is our third. We lost money under Siegel, but now we’re starting to make some. He (Dwyer) has only been around for a couple of months.”

Debate over the poor profit showing of Indian bingo at the Barona Reservation has seriously split the band, with free-flowing allegations of criminal wrongdoing among battling factions on the reservation.

Tenwolde emphasized that Thursday’s searches were prompted by evidence already in hand and contained in the sealed search warrant affidavits.

There was no question of jurisdiction because “we’re not investigating Indian bingo per se, but we’re responding to a complaint of a grand theft, an ongoing grand theft. The sheriff is charged with the responsibility of investigating state crimes, even if they occur on Indian land,” Tenwolde said.

He said the bingo games would not be shut down during the investigation, and the Barona Indians said the games would continue.

Tenwolde said the grand jury would begin hearing testimony on the investigation on Jan. 8. The Lakeside search Thursday was conducted by members of the Sheriff’s Department, the San Diego County district attorney’s office, the San Diego Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Justice.

Capt. Bill Sullivan of the New Jersey State Police Department acknowledged that his department was assisting San Diego investigators, but he declined to discuss its involvement.