A former senior exec at the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino in Pennsylvania has been arraigned on charges related to a fixed Easter Egg contest.
On Wednesday, Robert Joseph Pellegrini was hit with felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property along with a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to participate in a rigged contest that took place at the Mohegan Sun Pocono venue in 2014.
Pellegrini is the casino’s former VP of player development who was sentenced in June 2017 to 32 months in prison for conspiring with Mark Heltzel, a longtime casino customer, to cheat the venue’s free slots credit system. The scam ultimately cheated the casino out of $478k.
These latest charges relate to an Easter sweepstakes in which casino customers were ‘randomly’ selected to pick a plastic egg out of a basket for the opportunity to win a $10k prize. Casino host Kenneth Rowlands enlisted the help of Colin Ray Boecker, another casino staffer, to ensure that Heltzel would be selected to pick an egg, and that Heltzel knew in advance which egg was the grand prize winner.