Joliet Harrah's Keno Machine Cheat Racket Unraveled During Arizona Traffic Stop: Court Filing

The band of alleged gambling cheats charged with taking the Joliet Harrah's for as much as $500,000 was exposed during an April traffic stop in Arizona, according to court filings.

None of the five charged in Will County indictments handed down earlier this month have been taken into custody. All live out of state, with two in Indiana and three, including Bulgarian chess master and accomplished poker player Svetoslav Dorobanov, in Las Vegas.

Dorobanov earlier called the numerous felonies filed against him "phony" and said Harrah's was just "very bitter for losing money" to him.

In a text message over the weekend, Dorobanov reiterated that the charges were "preposterous" and referred questions to his attorney, Marvin Vining of Monticello, MS.

Vining said he was still learning about the case and declined to comment until he had been further apprised of the charges and evidence. He did say he also represents another defendant from Las Vegas, Randy D. Binning, who faces charges in Mississippi as well as Illinois.

The case started when Binning was pulled over by police in Arizona and found to be carrying more than $400,000, according to court papers.

Binning was "stopped for a traffic violation while he was driving a rental vehicle westbound on Interstate Highway I-40 in Cococino County," a filing said.

Binning "initially denied he was transporting any large amount of cash but subsequently admitted that the vehicle contained $400,000 in cash. (He) stated that he won the money gambling at casinos," the filing said.

A police "drug detection dog alerted to the trunk of the vehicle where the cash was located," the filing said. "A total of $405,000 was located in the trunk of the vehicle, $305,000 in a small suitcase and $100,000 in a 'Harrah's' bag hidden under the carpet over the driver's side wheel well."

When he was questioned at a police headquarters in Flagstaff, AZ, Binning said he "gambled and won on keno machines that were malfunctioning at Harrah's casinos in Joliet, Illinois, and Tunica, Mississippi," according to the filing.

But the cops in Arizona weren't buying Binning's story.

"Further investigation revealed that (Binning) was a member of a group of people who were manipulating keno machines to have them pay five times the winnings," the filing said. "Such manipulation of keno machines constituted theft."

Maybe so, but theft is one of the things Binning and Dorobanov have not been charged with. The two men, along with three others—Paul Jovenich, 42, also of Las Vegas, and Rande and Virginia Thorpe of La Porte, IN—were hit with such charges as burglary, the unlawful structuring of a currency transaction, money laundering, computer fraud, cheating at a gambling game and computer tampering.

Rande Thorpe, 57, happens to be the former superintendent of La Porte schools. He and his wife, Virginia, also 57, face charges in Mississippi as well.

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