Company Plans to Resume Bingo Games at Barona

LAKESIDE —  A representative of American Management and Amusement Co. said Thursday that the firm intends to resume bingo games at the Barona Indian Reservation later this month even though the tribe voted last week to void its management contract with the firm.

Paulette Cirksena, the controller for AMA, said the games will be staged again starting May 24 to take advantage of the Memorial Day weekend. She said AMA will resume them because the dispute between the management firm and the tribe has been resolved. “We have a signed contract, and you can’t keep out your partner,” she said.

The last games at the reservation were played April 27.

Her announcement stunned some tribal leaders, who noted that just last week the tribe voted, 75 to 5, to void the contract with AMA after owners of a competing bingo management company bought a 50% interest in the company.

The ownership change came without tribal approval, as the operating contract between AMA and the Barona Indians requires, and Barona tribal leaders cited that violation as their main reason for voting to void the contract.

Art Bunce, attorney for the Barona tribal council, said Thursday that AMA’s announcement was “news to me,” but he did not deny that AMA might be able to continue staging bingo games at Barona despite the tribe’s action. Although the council’s action last week was intended to remove AMA as the management company, “the matter is more complicated than you think,” he said.

Cirksena said she was told on Wednesday of the plans to resume the games by Fred Warner, AMA’s general manager. Both Warner and Ed Drasin, a Los Angeles businessman who is the chief executive of AMA, said “no comment” when asked to confirm the announcement.

A security guard at the bingo hall on the reservation said that he too was told Thursday that the bingo games would resume. An official with Pan American Co.--the firm that bought 50% of AMA--said that that deal was scuttled last Friday, the day after the tribal council vote, presumably so that AMA could continue to stage the games.

Buddy Levy, chairman of the board of Pan American, said that he and three other Pan American principal owners received a half interest in AMA in exchange for an agreement to pump $350,000 in working capital into the operation. He said the operation was struggling because nightly income was barely enough to cover the cash prizes.

But after the tribe voted to void the bingo contract, the Pan American associates and AMA’s owners agreed to rescind their agreement in order to allow AMA to continue offering the games, Levy said.

It was his understanding, Levy said, that AMA would reduce the amounts of the prizes in order to improve its financial situation.

Darlene Padilla, a member of the tribal council, said she was surprised by the announcement because “it’s my understanding there will be no more bingo. We voted to come out from under all management. But I don’t know if AMA was made to understand that.”

Katherine Holsbo, who had rallied reservation opposition to the bingo games, said she was “flabbergasted and appalled” that Bunce had failed to get a restraining order to keep AMA employees out of the bingo hall after the council decision.

She said tribe members who had heard about AMA’s announcement are attempting to schedule an emergency tribal council meeting Monday night to discuss the matter.

Thursday’s announcement came as the state attorney general’s office filed criminal complaints against two men for their alleged connections with fixed bingo games on the reservation.

Louis Cordileone, a Los Angeles-area businessman, is scheduled to be arraigned this morning in San Diego Municipal Court on charges that he coerced a witness to lie to the San Diego County Grand Jury about her role as a shill in the rigged games.

Joseph Catania was charged with three felony counts of grand theft for allegedly teaching shills how to carry out their roles as predetermined winners in rigged games, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Gary Shons. Catania will be arraigned next week, Shons said.

Stewart Siegel, a former general manager of the bingo games for AMA, pleaded guilty April 2 to grand theft for rigging games in which his accomplices won nearly $140,000 in cash prizes.

Meanwhile, Rincon Indians have announced that bingo games will resume at their reservation, northeast of Escondido, on May 31, after nearly a yearlong hiatus. The management company running the games said it would pull out because it was losing too much money.

Max Mazzetti, Rincon tribal chairman, said the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved a contract between the tribe and Saul Wright, an Escondido resident and former deputy district attorney for San Diego County. Mazzetti said the contract calls for Wright to lease the Indians’ bingo hall--constructed and financed by the previous management company--for $6,600 a month and to give the Indians 70% of the net profit from the games.

The Barona Indians’ 25-year pact with AMA, which was not approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, called for the Indians to receive 55% of the net profit. AMA built and financed the Barona bingo hall, and a share of the gross receipts was to go toward the cost of the $3.3-million hall.