Chandler man fights gambling charges

Jim Bennitt liked high-stakes gambling but concedes he wasn't very good at it. The Chandler businessman is now at risk of losing everything he owns and his freedom.

But his troubles aren't from compulsive gambling or his lack of acumen for wagering. He's one of 36 men indicted Wednesday in connection with illegal gambling, and he's also involved in a companion civil lawsuit in which the state is seeking to seize assets and cash under racketeering laws.

Bennitt, who owns Pride Printing in Scottsdale, a business he started in 1992 in his Tempe apartment, proclaims his innocence and vows to fight the charges.

"I might be the only defendant in this case who's come out swinging," Bennitt said. "If you didn't have a business like I do, you wouldn't be able to fight this."

Jean-Jacques Cabou, Bennitt's attorney in the civil case, said criminal defendants who also get sued by the state under racketeering laws usually have enough money to fight only one case, so they have to decide whether to fight for their money in the civil case or their freedom in the criminal case.

They usually choose the criminal case, Cabou said.

Bennitt said he'll fight both.

Cabou said the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office was authorized in April to seize $1 million in cash and assets from Bennitt for his alleged role in the gambling operation, but detectives took almost $15 million.

According to the indictment and search warrant affidavits, investigators with the sheriff's office allege he was partners with Eugene Valentini of Phoenix in a gambling Web site based out of Costa Rica.

Authorities say the gambling was illegal because the bets were made online but the debts were settled in Arizona.

The probe began in March 2005 and involved only one gambling operation, but detectives identified four separate groups - some of which were based out of the East Valley and Scottsdale - that were loosely connected with each other, court documents show.

Detectives learned from wiretaps of Valentini's phone that Bennitt placed more than $1 million in bets and wired more than $800,000 to Costa Rica over a two-month span in late 2006.

Bennitt said he met Valentini a few years ago, and they were good friends.

Bennitt bet mostly on basketball and college and pro football games, losing often, and sometimes wired his debts where he was told and sometimes paid in person.

All of the betting and payoffs were done openly, he said.

"I'd walk into my bank like it was a Circle K and I was buying a Coke," Bennitt said.

Deputy chief Bill Knight, who is in charge of the sheriff's investigations, said that besides the wiretaps, undercover detectives opened betting accounts and made hand-to-hand exchanges with bookies.

"We had ample enough probable cause to get an indictment," Knight said.

On April 24, Bennitt's wife called him at work to tell him someone was banging on their door and declaring to have a search warrant. Bennitt said he couldn't believe it was the police, so he called the Chandler police, thinking it was a home invasion.

When he got to his cul-de-sac, there were four undercover police cars at his house, and he was greeted by a deputy in black pointing a military-style rifle at him and ordering him out of the car.

He was handcuffed and had to wait around in front of his neighbors for a while before he was taken to jail.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a news conference to announce the arrests of more than 30 suspects and the seizure of $145 million in cash, bank accounts and cars in the gambling probe.

Arpaio posed in front of a line of luxury cars that were seized, including a Rolls Royce and two Bentleys.

"The cars he stood in front of were my cars," Bennitt said.

The law allows the state to seize money and assets that are obtained illegally.

Bennitt said detectives took cameras, tools, broke his children's piggy bank, stripped earrings and the wedding ring from his wife and took most paperwork from the house.

Knight said he heard nothing about anyone getting stripped of their jewelry, and he doesn't believe that would have occurred. But he said breaking a piggy bank and taking documents are appropriate.

"We're going to search everything in that house," Knight said.

Most everyone who was arrested that day was released within 24 hours and not charged until Wednesday.

But while Bennitt was still in jail at 2 p.m., he called his wife and discovered all of his personal and business bank accounts were drained, and payroll for 90 employees was just two days away.

When he got home at 2 a.m., Bennitt said he had to figure out how to make payroll.

He called all of his customers and asked them to pay their bills early, which most did.

Bennitt has gotten back most of his property and negotiated with prosecutors to place a lien of $1 million in equity on real estate. He has since declared bankruptcy and sold the Pride Printing building.

Cabou has asked Maricopa County Superior Court to throw out the civil case, alleging that Arizona laws for seizing property in criminal cases are unconstitutional and wrongly applied in Bennitt's case.

Bennitt is charged with 11 counts in the 250-count indictment.

More than half of the counts are either misdemeanors or low-grade felonies. But the most serious counts, which include money laundering, illegally conducting an enterprise and illegal use of a wire or electronic communication, could land long prison sentences.

"I can guarantee 100 percent I am not part of any organization," Bennitt said.