San Jose Reported Next for Slot Ring : Illegal gambling: Tuesday’s arrests halted plans of suspects to place video slot machines in Vietnamese community up north, authorities believe.

A gambling ring that placed illegal video slot machines in Vietnamese neighborhoods in Orange and Los Angeles counties was planning to expand into San Jose’s Vietnamese business district, police said Thursday.

Documents seized in a police raid Tuesday show the suspects had already identified about 15 Asian-owned video stores, billiard halls, cafes and nightclubs along Santa Clara Street, where San Jose’s Vietnamese shops and restaurants are clustered.

Receipts also show that the organization, which was based in South Orange County but had extensive ties to the East Coast, had set up a San Jose answering service and a mail drop, both under phony names, police said.

Investigators said they did not know why the suspects, who are all Caucasian, had targeted Vietnamese communities.

“Nobody wants to talk to us right now,” said Westminster Detective Bob Gill.

However, police speculated that the ring might have discovered that slot machines were popular among Vietnamese-Americans on the East Coast, or learned that no organized gambling rings “owned” the turf in Orange County’s Little Saigon.

“This is a relatively new community, and it doesn’t have any strong internal ties that would keep (the ring) out,” Gill said.

Records showed the gambling ring grossed $400,000 in Orange County last month alone. Police believe that the ring would have begun installing machines in San Jose within weeks if the arrests had not occurred.

On Tuesday, police raided 37 homes and businesses and confiscated 79 rigged video machines from Vietnamese-owned arcades, cafes, billiard halls and beauty parlors in Westminster, Garden Grove, South El Monte and Rosemead. Six men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to distribute slot machines, a felony. Five other suspects are still at large.

On Thursday, Detective Carl Olson, a gambling authority from the Los Angeles Police Department, and local detectives were still sifting through cartons of documents seized at a luxury apartment in Costa Mesa where Gerald William Brim, 35, William Henry Lee, 40, and Werner Wiedenhofer, 38, were arrested.

Officers were also taking stock of a cache of weapons found in every room of the apartment, including shotguns, assault rifles, pistols and an army vest stuffed with ammunition.

Westminster Detective Terry Selinske said one loaded assault rifle was found under a bed.

“They were definitely set up to protect their little stronghold, but some of this stuff is overkill for the neighborhood,” Selinske said.

Someone in the organization had kept meticulous records, was in the process of computerizing the bookkeeping, and had even invested in a fax machine and a shredder.

Each machine was numbered, and each also had a green ledger, in which neat handwriting detailed the computerized readings from the slot machines, followed by the categories “P.O.” (pay-off) “Take” and “Split.”

One machine seized from a Westminster video arcade had taken in $9,000 in less than three weeks, the records show. After the customers were paid off, the ring and the store owner split the profits evenly, police alleged.

One ledger neatly recorded that $231,000 had been “paid to New York,” beginning with $13,000 in November. The last entry, dated Feb. 20, was for a $100,000 payment.

Police also have uncovered an invoice for $64,750 from Greyhound Electronics Inc. of Toms River, N.J., a major manufacturer of video machines, including slots which can be sold legally in Nevada but may not legally be shipped to California. Greyhound machines were among those seized Tuesday. The company’s invoice, dated in January, shows that payment was overdue.

“Greyhound’s not about to ship $65,000 worth of machines to anybody unless they know them,” Olson said. “For them to ship first and let them pay later, they either had to know the person or the money’s guaranteed by someone else. This is a long way from New Jersey.”

Greyhound Electronics did not return a phone call Thursday.

Several hours after the first search warrants were served, one of the suspects who escaped arrest was seen entering a Costa Mesa bank with a large empty sack, police said. The man visited his safety deposit box and left with the sack bulging, bank employees told police.

Police seized about $53,000 in cash in the raids, but by the time they learned of the safety deposit box and obtained a search warrant, the box had been emptied.

A Santa Ana attorney, Robert D. Coveillo, posted $10,000 in cash bail for three of the defendants, and the other three were released on their own recognizance, Westminster Detective Gill said. The attorney stated that he was not representing the defendants but refused to elaborate, Gill added.

Coveillo did not return a phone call to his office Thursday, and the six defendants could not be reached for comment.