Felon Tied to Casino Plan Is Investigated : Oxnard: District attorney’s background check reinforces officials’ concerns about bringing big-time gambling to the area.

A move to build one of the state’s largest card club casinos in Oxnard has touched off an investigation into the background of a convicted felon involved in one casino proposal.

Though still early in the application process, Oxnard officials confirmed last week that the Ventura County district attorney’s office has been gathering information about key backers of two competing casino proposals.

Top city officials said questions raised by the background checks have reinforced their concerns about bringing big-time gambling to Oxnard. But they said the cash-strapped city will continue its analysis of card clubs as a potential source of new revenue.

County prosecutors would not comment on their inquiry.

But The Times has learned that a focus of the probe is the criminal record of Timothy M. Carey, a Los Angeles County political consultant who proposed building a $6-million casino in an office park near the Ventura Freeway.

Court records show that Carey, 35, pleaded no contest last year to three felony counts of committing lewd acts upon a 12-year-old San Pedro girl. He is serving five years probation.

In addition, a second Los Angeles County businessman who was involved in Carey’s proposed project has acknowledged his participation in an early 1980s scheme that hid the true ownership of a card club in Bell, a small city near Los Angeles.

Former attorney Kevin Kirwan of Santa Monica, a front man for two Bell officials who secretly owned 51% of the Bell card club, pleaded guilty in 1984 to two mail fraud charges. A federal judge set aside both convictions in 1990 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in another case that mail fraud could not be charged in political corruption cases.

Although his conviction was set aside, Carey said Friday that he removed Kirwan from the project in March after city officials were told of his past and expressed concern.

But Carey said his effort at damage control was undercut when word leaked to city officials last month about his own crimes. He said he told four of the five council members last week that he had a criminal record.

Their response was “a lot of blank stares, disgust. That’s when I realized I was out.”

Carey said he is trying to hand over control of his project to others, but hopes to retain a 5% share of ownership.

Convicted felons are generally excluded from owning or managing card clubs, state gaming control officials said.

The disclosures about Carey and Kirwan are the most recent twists in an eight-month effort by two competing groups of promoters to gain city permission to build the county’s first large gaming club.

Like their counterparts in other cash-starved cities around the state, Oxnard officials have expressed strong interest in hosting a casino because of tax benefits--up to $2 million a year by one promoter’s estimate.

However, most Oxnard City Council members said Friday that there is little chance Carey’s proposal could now be approved.

And they said that the circumstances surrounding Carey have made it harder to approve any casino, especially considering the history of corruption at Los Angeles County’s largest card clubs.

Large card clubs in Bell Gardens, Bell and Commerce--three small cities east of Los Angeles--were the focus of federal organized crime investigations in the 1980s that ended either in government seizure of the club or convictions of city officials on bribery and hidden-ownership charges.

“When there’s a lot of money floating around unaccounted for, it presents a lot of opportunities for skimming,” said Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez. “In other cities where there is gambling, we have seen city officials go to jail. I know it would bring in revenue, but I don’t think the risks are worth it.”

Councilmen Tom Holden, Andres Herrera and Bedford Pinkard said they also feel a chill in their considerations of gambling because one of their first brushes with casinos involved Carey and Kirwan.

“It’s unsettling,” Holden said. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”

Herrera said the Carey disclosure “leaves a kind of bitter taste. . . . It seems like every day we get more (bad) information. You say, ‘What’s next? Is it all going to be worth the time and effort?’ ”

Pinkard said the Carey disclosures “make my little antennas pop up. What I’ve said is that the group we’re working with must be squeaky, squeaky clean. That’s my No. 1 concern.”

But Councilman Michael Plisky, whose fall campaign manager--Donald Gunn--is now Carey’s consultant on the casino project, said he still generally favors a card club and doesn’t see Carey as an issue.

“I don’t think it matters,” Plisky said. “This is something we’ll deal with later. We’re just starting in the process. . . . In and of itself, I don’t see a card club as being a threat.”

Both Plisky and Lopez have already been touched by the big money that gambling interests bring to a city. Both received large political campaign contributions from Kirwan and a Carey-run political action committee last fall.

A Kirwan trust account contributed $1,000 to each, and Carey’s Southern California Caucus contributed $750 to Lopez and $999 to Plisky.

Former Councilwomen Dorothy Maron and Geraldine Furr, who lost reelection bids in November, also received large contributions from Kirwan. And Carey’s PAC gave to Maron.

Together, the four incumbents received a total of $6,748 in the last week of the November campaign from Kirwan and Carey.

Plisky said he sent Kirwan’s money back to him in March as soon as he found out about the former lawyer’s past legal troubles.

Lopez said he has not sent back Kirwan’s money and doesn’t know if he will. Though Carey said he authorized the contributions to spread goodwill for his project, both Lopez and Plisky said they did not know Carey was associated with the Southern California Caucus.

Despite the recent problems, Oxnard officials said the prospect of an infusion of gaming taxes is a powerful argument for continuing their consideration of card clubs.

Reeling from sharp state funding cuts, Oxnard must slash $4 million from its $60-million budget for the fiscal year beginning in July. That follows a $2.5-million cut this fiscal year.

Cities throughout Southern California, in fact, are turning to card clubs as a kind of golden goose that will carry them through tight times.

Card club proposals are on the June ballot in the cities of West Hollywood, Cypress, Pico Rivera and Stanton. A card club at the Hollywood Park race track was approved by Inglewood voters in November.

All but two of the state’s seven major card club casinos--those with 50 tables or more--are in Los Angeles County, and neighboring cities are casting covetous glances in their direction.

The Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens, the state’s largest, turned over $10.8 million to the city last fiscal year, while the nearby city of Commerce reaped $10.2 million. Gardena’s two clubs generated slightly under $5 million.

However, experts say the economics of card clubs vary, depending on size, location and how well they are operated. A club in Huntington Park yielded only $251,000 in gaming taxes last year, and the old Bell Club has been closed for a year.

The two proposals now before Oxnard would produce casinos only one-fourth as large as the giants in Bell Gardens and Commerce, and casino analysts say they probably would draw only a fraction of the Asian customers that live near the Los Angeles-area casinos and make some of them so profitable.

Carey has proposed building a 56,000-square-foot casino with 50 tables and 600 employees on Rice Road near the freeway. It would net the city $540,000 to $864,000 a year and bring another $500,000 annually to Oxnard charities, Carey said.

The second group, headed by Ventura developer Michael E. Wooten, has proposed construction of a 50-table, 52,000-square-foot casino just north of Price Club along the Ventura Freeway. Depending on business, the city would reap $500,000 to $2 million, and charities would get about $500,000, Wooten said.

Plisky said two other promoters are waiting in the wings but have filed no papers with the city.

“Our attitude is that it’s worth looking into because of tight budget times and the financial constraints we face,” Plisky said.

Some city officials have been putting out that same message since at least last spring, when Wooten floated an ill-begotten plan to convert the old Sharkey’s restaurant at Channel Islands Harbor into a small casino.

Neighbor outrage quickly killed that proposal, Wooten said, but he and several partners finally found a suitable location at Oxnard’s new commercial strip along the freeway.

Wooten and Frank Marasco--owners of the small, struggling residential development firm of Darrik Marten in Ventura--were convinced they had the right idea, but they still needed a managing partner with money and expertise in gambling.

That is how today’s two competing promoters--Carey and Wooten--first met, they said. Wooten had heard that Carey had excellent political connections with developers, so he called the Torrance-based consultant, who lined up a meeting.

Carey--who ran statewide campaigns to limit the terms of state and federal lawmakers and who has worked as a political operative for former Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum--quickly produced both money, in the person of Los Angeles county developer Edward Roski Jr., and expertise in Kirwan.

But after a series of meetings in August and September, talks broke off with each accusing the other of unethical conduct.

Wooten said Carey bad-mouthed him and tried to cut his own deal with charity interests Wooten had lined up as co-applicants. Carey said Wooten tried to keep Roski and Kirwan, but cut him out of the deal.

At one point Carey said his team offered Wooten’s group the equivalent of $20,000 a month for life from casino proceeds to gain approvals from Oxnard, then turn the casino over to Roski and Kirwan to finance and operate.

“We said we’d set them up for life,” Carey said. “That would be a nice check. But they wanted more.”

Wooten, who is also an attorney and former in-house counsel for the developers of Ventura Harbor, said the real problem was not the offer--but Carey.

“We had disclosed our plans to them on a confidential basis,” but Carey did not keep the information confidential, Wooten said.

In December, Wooten said he finally reached the type of agreement he had sought with Carey by turning over a 77% interest in his project to Santa Monica attorney Richard P. Crane Jr.

Crane, former head of the U.S. attorney’s organized crime strike force in Los Angeles, brought to the deal his expertise in gaming enforcement and experience as part owner of two Las Vegas casinos and gaming clubs in Colorado, Wooten said. Crane will also arrange the financing, Wooten said.

“Crane brought a real credibility and legitimacy to the project,” Wooten said. “We thought the city people would not want to take a chance on someone who was not impeccable. And he has a real spotless reputation.”

Crane, however, will have to hurdle his own obstacles, since state gaming authorities say California generally forbids owners of Nevada clubs from holding gaming licenses here, because those gambling activities are not legal in this state.