Pull-tab parlor owner charged with stealling from nonprofits

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http://www.adn.com/2011/08/31/2042519/pulltab-parlor-operator-charged.html
Pull-tab parlor owner charged with stealling from nonprofits

ALLEGATIONS: Former state gaming investigator demanded bribes.
By CASEY GROVE casey.grove@adn.com
Published: August 31st, 2011 11:24 PM Last Modified: August 31st, 2011 11:25 PM
The owner of an Anchorage pull-tab parlor has been charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars and demanding bribes from nonprofit organizations for which he was supposed to be raising money.
The indicted gaming operator, Abraham Joseph Spicola, is a former state gaming investigator who owns the now-defunct Lucky Times Pull Tabs in Spenard and was behind the private, half-million-dollar "lottery" plagued by payout delays through 2009 and 2010.
Spicola, 36, now faces nine felony counts, including theft, fraud, and falsifying business records, according to a grand jury indictment handed up Friday. The state also accused him of stealing $4,400 in unemployment benefits he obtained while working full time at his pull-tab parlor.
The indictment takes the place of two earlier criminal complaints brought against Spicola, one in January and another in July.
The indictment said he stole at least $25,000 from Alaska Bikers Advocating Training and Education -- ABATE -- and more than $10,000 from Anchorage Community Theatre. Spicola is accused of failing to pay both groups for gaming proceeds raised under their permits, the indictment says.
Games of chance with cash payouts -- pull tabs, raffles and lotteries -- are allowed under Alaska law, but only for the benefit of permitted charitable organizations. The organizations can sign a contract with licensed gaming operators like Spicola, who are supposed give at least 30 percent of the proceeds of a particular game to the charity, according to state law.
Because there are more charitable groups with gaming permits than there are operators with the ability to run their games, some operators in the past have played groups off against each other in an effort to obtain a higher rate of return for themselves. In part, that's what prosecutors are accusing Spicola of doing.
A state investigator's affidavit filed in court in January said Spicola failed to cough up tens of thousands of dollars and demanded illegal compensation from the groups. He told community theatre officials that if they didn't kick back money to him or "invest" in his operations, he would no longer run pull tabs under their permit, the affidavit said.
Investigator James Kurth wrote that Spicola began soliciting pull-tab business from the community theatre while he was still a Revenue Department official who regulated legal gambling.
But after leaving his state job and getting his permit to run pull tabs for charities at Lucky Times, he began falling behind in monthly payments to the community theater in 2007. The community theater's board president, Brian Saylor, told Kurth that Spicola "became verbally abusive."
According to the affidavit, Spicola filed false reports to the state, claiming he paid the community theater when he had not. At first, Kurth said, Saylor went along with Spicola, agreeing not to complain to Spicola's former co-workers in the Department of Revenue "because he believed that Mr. Spicola would make the payments and because he did not want Mr. Spicola to get in trouble."
But by October 2008, the theater group told the Department of Revenue that Spicola owed it money. According to the court documents, an investigation revealed Spicola owed ACT about $10,200.
ACT's interim director said Spicola had also asked for illegal compensation, Kurth wrote in his sworn affidavit.
"... (Spicola) wanted ACT to purchase a Pull-Tab Point of Sale system, worth in his estimation $9000, and to give Lucky Times 'kickbacks' or he would find another organization that would," Kurth wrote.
The point of sale system Kurth referred to -- the Tab Wizard -- is a device that allows a parlor-owner to track sales of pull tabs, according to the Seattle-based company.
In December 2008, Spicola ended his relationship with ACT and signed a contract with Alaska Bikers Advocating Training and Education to sell pulltabs for the motorcyclist advocacy group. Spicola told the ABATE members in charge of the organization's gaming permit that they would need to pay for a bond and buy the Tab Wizard he'd previously asked the theatre group for, Kurth wrote. Both expenses should have been shouldered by Spicola, Kurth wrote.
There were also allegations of a $10,000 "incentive" payment Spicola had required, the investigator wrote.
"(Spicola) said that ABATE agreed to give him $10,000, and that the money would not go into his 'Gaming' account, but would be deposited in his and his wife Heidi's personal accounts," Kurth wrote. "Mr. Spicola said he considered it an investment in the business; that he and Heidi worked really hard and the money was compensation for their work."
Spicola failed to give monthly payments or reports to ABATE and owed the biker group more than $17,000 as of May 2010, according to the affidavit.
Along with the charges related to ABATE and ACT, Spicola is also accused of falsifying business records related to gaming under a permit issued to Standing Together Against Rape, a sexual assault outreach group. Spicola ran two $500,000 lotteries for STAR, both of which were marred by controversy. One lottery ended with a January 2009 payout to a registered sex offender; the other was delayed for months.
Spicola's attorney said neither he nor Spicola would comment.