Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 23, 1993 TAG: 9303230306
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
1 PLEADS GUILTY IN GAMBLING
GAMBLING CHARGES were dropped against four Hollins Moose Lodge members. But a fifth pleaded guilty to aiding a gambling operation - and Botetourt's sheriff says others may be charged.
On Jan. 20, law officers looking for evidence of illegal gambling pushed their way into the Hollins Moose Lodge.
Inside a smoke-filled room, the officers found four men around a table playing cards.
But there was a problem: The men weren't playing poker. They were playing "100-point rummy." And there were no chips or cash on the table.
Monday, Botetourt County prosecutor Rob Hagan asked that misdemeanor gambling charges against the four rummy players be dismissed. He said there was no evidence the men were gambling at the time of the raid.
Afterward, the four card players said the Botetourt Sheriff's Department and the news media had dragged them through the mud and publicly embarrassed them.
"Now I know what it's like to be in Russia and the KBG comes in," Charles Fisher Faggart said. "I'll never come to Botetourt again."
But Sheriff Reed Kelly is not apologizing to the four.
"It's hit and miss," Kelly said. "You raid a gambling house. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. . . . At this time they were not playing poker. If we waited an hour, who knows? They might have been."
Kelly said clearly there was illegal gambling going on at the Moose Lodge over a period of several months.
In fact, a fifth defendant in the case, Michael Oland Wright, pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge that he was aiding a gambling operation.
In exchange, Hagan dropped a felony charge that he had actually been directing illegal gambling at the lodge. Under a plea agreement, Wright received a suspended sentence and agreed to pay $500 to cover the costs of the investigation.
And Kelly said it's "very likely" that others will be charged with being involved.
Meeting minutes and financial records from the Moose Lodge showed that Wright had made numerous donations in "odd dollar amounts" to the lodge, Kelly said.
Kelly maintains that those donations represented thousands of dollars that the lodge was receiving from the money that was bet on poker games.
Hagan said he agreed to reduce the charge against Wright because, "we didn't think it fair to single out Wright as a felony operator."
The evidence "established him to be the doorman," Hagan said. He was in charge of opening up for the games and buying food and drink. "He shapes up as a pretty little fish," the prosecutor said.
A Moose officer has denied that the lodge was earning profits from the poker games. The lodge did receive voluntary donations to cover the costs of refreshments and electricity during the poker games, the officer said. But, he said, "we don't cut the pot."
Law-enforcement officials say gambling on cards is legal - no matter how much is bet - as long as the game's organizer does not take a share of the stakes as a profit. If that happens, then the card game becomes an illegal gambling operation.
During the raid at the Moose Lodge on U.S. 11, officers confiscated $5,182, including more than $3,000 in the money clip of one of the rummy players. After the charges were dropped Monday, the Sheriff's Department gave the rummy players their money back.
Charges were dropped against Faggart, Norman Yale Azarch, Bobby Orman Kiker and Earl Randolph Wills.
Faggart, who runs a landscaping business, said the Sheriff's Department should have more important things to worry about than policing card games. "Why do they spend time on that when people are being raped, murdered and pilfered? . . . Why waste the taxpayers' money? I just think it's a lot of to-do for nothing."
When told about the criticism from Faggart and the others, Kelly said in a voice of mock concern, "That hurts me deeply.
"They can fuss all they want. I don't care," Kelly said. "It's not like we busted in on a church social."
Two of the men, Kiker and Azarch, had been charged with gambling after a June 1991 raid in Roanoke. Police confiscated $10,677 from a Patterson Avenue location that officers said was being used as a gaming establishment.
According to court records, Kiker and Azarch were among those sitting or standing around a card table when police burst in. As the officers entered, another man ran through the house yelling "Help!" and "Police!"
However, a judge dropped the charges against Kiker, Azarch and six others. Because the officers had not actually seen the men playing cards, the judge ruled, they had no right to search them or confiscate their money.