SAN DIEGO

Two men, who gained notoriety last year when their tour company stranded 185 area students on the East Coast, joined a third man Friday in pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges related to the illegal selling of Pennsylvania lottery tickets.

Anthony Donald Casias and Leo Ronald Casias, 39-year-old twins, both pleaded no contest to one count of assisting in the sale of lottery tickets. Gerald Mohr, 44, pleaded no contest to aiding and abetting in the sale of lottery tickets. The charges stem from the sale of tickets for the April 27 Pennsylvania lottery, which offered a jackpot of more than $100 million.

All three could be sentenced to a maximum of six months in jail and up to a $1,000 fine. Sentencing will be Sept. 29.

In exchange for the pleas, which were accepted by Municipal Judge Raphael A. Arreola, felony counts related to the selling of tickets were dropped against all three, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Douglas Gregg.

The tickets were sold at Spring Valley and Chula Vista outlets of Cashland, check-cashing stores operated by Mohr that are authorized to sell California lottery tickets.

It is illegal in California to sell any tickets other than California State Lottery tickets, Gregg said.

Customers were sold facsimiles of actual lottery tickets that were purchased in Pennsylvania and were to be flown here using a special courier, investigators said, but hundreds of customers were given refunds when many of the tickets never arrived.

Last year, a group of 185 students from Emerald Junior High School in El Cajon was stranded in Washington after the Casias’ East-West Travel and Tours filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act.

In 1984, the twins were sentenced to five years’ probation after they pleaded guilty to bank larceny in a case that involved the embezzlement of more than $440,000 from California First Bank and Bank of America.