Garden City Casino skimming scandal
San Jose, California, white-collar crime
The Garden City Casino Skimming scandal was a six-year-long investigation initially conducted by the Santa Clara County grand jury and the San Jose Police Department and tried in the Santa Clara County superior court between 1981 and 1987 into the skimming perpetrated by twelve Garden City Casino owners and employees. Prosecutors in the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office unsealed an indictment totaling of 60 felony counts accusing fourteen individuals of criminal conspiracy that included: committing a crime, defraud, violating campaign disclosure laws, filing false tax returns, and perjury. Of those fourteen individuals, twelve pleaded guilty. This scandal was regarded by The Mercury News as "one of the longest-running criminal cases" in Santa Clara County's history.
Background
Criminal proceedings
On May 6, 1987, fourteen employees of Garden City Casino were indicted, by the Santa Clara County grand jury, with sixty total felony counts of Criminal conspiracy, Conspiracy to commit a crime, Conspiracy to defraud, Conspiracy to violate campaign disclosure laws, filing false individual state tax returns, filing fraudulent corporate state tax returns, and perjury. Three of those criminal counts indicted against former president Nicholas J. Dalis, included two counts of attempted grand theft and one count of grand theft. Prosecutors and the San Jose Police Department alleged that the casino skimmed $3.8 million in the last eight years and that the casino owners "reimbursed employees for giving campaign contributions -- a violation of state law". Hours before the arraignment, the California Franchise Tax Board raided the casino and "seized about $200,000 to recover unpaid taxes."
Twelve employees pleaded or were found guilty, and the ownership was barred from renewing their gaming licenses as a result of their criminal convictions. The casino was ordered to, both, pay a $5 million fine and for the convicted owners to sell all their shares by October 1993. Seven out of the twelve employees were sentenced to house arrest and nine out of the twelve defendants were sentenced to community service.
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