Ryan Stone, one of the owners of Seven Mile Casino in Chula Vista, is one of the new breed of owners. Walk into these places now, they are like full blown casinos.” “They make a lot of money, not on poker by and large, they make it on the casino games. “They are profitable business and you can see that,” he said. He said the longstanding image of card rooms like Penn’s - “seven old guys sitting around a low-ball table throwing quarters into a pot” - no longer holds. “This is the end of the single-guy card room owner,” said Richard Schuetz, a former member of the California Gambling Control Commission who has worked in the gaming industry in positions from a casino dealer to Las Vegas executive and is now a consultant. He did not violate the terms of his deferred prosecution agreement, and all charges were dropped in April 2020. Penn, now 83, did not respond to several requests for an interview sent to him and via lawyers. The step-up in regulations passed some of these mom-and-pops by.” “New regulations come in, and he’s not used to doing things that way. “A guy like Stanley Penn was used to operating in a certain way for a long time,” Blonien said. Over time new regulations and financial compliance requirements put new demands on the businesses that many could not or were not interested in meeting, said Jarhett Blonien, a lobbyist who represents card rooms around the state. Much to the consternation of tribal casinos that dominate the state’s gaming market, card rooms now offer a suite of casino-style games, and not only poker. In recent years, they have been replaced by a new breed, more corporate and better capitalized, that seek to change the industry’s image from cramped and sweaty rooms to airy casino-like venues. Penn is also among the last of the old-style card room owners in San Diego, and the state: sole proprietors, often tavern owners who had a few tables in the back room, who ran the clubs featuring mostly poker games like a small family-owned business. The Lucky Lady was the last legally operating licensed card club in a city that once had more than 100 card rooms - Alibi on Richmond Street, Doc’s Lo-Ball Poker at 61st and El Cajon Boulevard, House of Cards on Ocean View Boulevard. Simultaneous arrests were also made around the country in Arizona, Iowa, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania.It was an answer that was both a promise, and a kind of epitaph for the business he had toiled in for 40 years.īecause last month, after a year when the business was shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic, Penn sold the Lucky Lady property in the El Cerrito neighborhood to the Family Health Centers of San Diego, and permanently closed the casino.Īnd with that, San Diego’s once-thriving card room industry ended, likely never to be seen again. The FBI raided both card rooms and seized over a half of million in cash in player's sport book accounts. Losing sportsbettors often wrote checks directly to the casinos.įat Dave and associates got careless discussing the details of their operation in the wide open because the FBI has damaging evidence via two years of wire taps. Local winners were often paid out with poker chips from either card room. His customer base included over 360 accounts and serviced clients in Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and the Caribbean. During a pre-dawn raid, the FBI shut down Palomar and Seven Mile.įat Dave's offshore sportsbook handled approximately $2 million per month in wagers. In addition to running a high-end prostitution ring and general bookmaking (utilizing an online sportsbook hosted offshore), proceeds in excess of $10 million were laundered through various shell companies and two popular San Diego-based card rooms – The Seven Mile Casino and the Palomar Card Club. ![]() The Feds believe that the lead defendant in the case and established bookie from San Diego, David “Fat Dave” Stroj, has links to the Philadelphia mafia.Īfter gathering evidence for two years, the FBI arrested 25 people in six different states in conjunction with Fat Dave's illegal gambling operation that hosted high-stakes poker games and backroom casino host in various mansions in some of San Diego's wealthiest neighborhoods. The FBI busted up a lucrative illegal gambling ring on Wednesday in San Diego, California.
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