Valley Center

The Rincon Indians have, for the third time, changed the manager of their bingo games, this time hiring an Ohio man who has operated other high-stakes Indian reservation bingo games to take control of the local, struggling games which haven’t been played in more than a week.

The new manager is Larry Parr, an Indian bingo consultant and owner of a bingo supply company, who took over the management of Southwest Indian Consultants, which has the five-year contract with Rincon to operate the unregulated bingo games for a 30% share of the profit. The previous manager, Saul Wright, quit on Friday after being unable to make any profit for the Indians in five months of bingo playing.

Tribal Chairman Max Mazzetti said Parr was experienced in bingo promotion and that the Rincon Indians were willing to try yet another manager to make a go of the games.

The first bingo manager at Rincon, Charles Schlagel, quit in June, 1985, after reportedly losing $800,000 of his investors’ money. Wright resurrected the bingo games on May 31, and while he was able to forward $50,000 in advance money to the Indians and pay $6,000 a month rent for the bingo hall, the games made no additional profit and in recent weeks employees complained of missed or late paychecks.

Parr said Tuesday that past debts will be cleared up and the bingo games will resume on Saturday with free bingo and cash awards, including a $2,000 jackpot.