Rogers man focus of FBI investigation into illegal gambling operation
ROGERS — Investigators of a suspected gambling operation found photographs of slot machines on a real estate website when the owner put the house up for sale in November, according to court documents.
Robert E. Rogers of 2711 W. Garrett Road in Rogers is set for arraignment in federal court in Fayetteville at 3 p.m. today, the U.S. attorney’s office confirmed Wednesday.
The case is sealed, and specifics on the charges cannot be released until arraignment, a spokesman for the office said. Rogers’ attorney, Kimberly R. Weber, said she could confirm Rogers is her client and has been under investigation in regard to gambling, but said she couldn’t comment further.
A search warrant issued Feb. 3 and related court documents show Rogers and four others who weren’t named were targets of a 10-month investigation of a gambling operation. The warrant allowed the search and seizure of evidence and property at Rogers’ home, three bank safety deposit boxes and of a vehicle owned by Rogers. The U.S. attorney has also filed two civil suits to seize Rogers’ home and a lake house in Oklahoma, along with other property.
“For approximately the past 10 months, the IRS and the FBI have been receiving information and conducting an investigation of an illegal gambling operation conducted by Robert Rogers and at least four others,” the search warrant affidavit says. The warrant also says investigators believe money laundering transactions are occurring with proceeds from the illegal gambling operations.
The U.S. Justice Depart-
ment’s Financial Crimes Task Force received information that a person who was a financial adviser was structuring withdrawals from his personal accounts at two local banks, court documents say. Structuring is the purposeful evasion of currency reporting laws and includes the breaking down of a single sum of currency exceeding $10,000 in to smaller amounts, the warrant affidavit says. Transactions of more than $10,000 must be reported by banks to federal regulators.
“The total in structured funds, since 2012, exceeds $560,000,” the affidavit says. Court documents identify the financial adviser as a bettor of Rogers’ establishment, not a participant in the enterprise.
Bank records also show at least two wire transfers from the adviser’s account to Rogers’ account, each of at least $20,000, with one each in 2015
and 2016, the affidavit says. Rogers had been paying a Pinnacle Bank mortgage loan for a lake house at 64660 E. 253 Lane in Grove, Okla., with cash, according to the affidavit.
On Oct. 28, investigators “seized four bags of trash from inside the trash can and found the following items which confirm a gambling operation is being conducted from the residence,” the affidavit says, listing both printed and hand-written documents detailing sports betting and “numerous hand-written notes detailing names, phone numbers, dollar amounts and sport teams.”
Rogers listed his house for sale, and investigators found photographs of the inside on his real estate agent’s website. The photographs show the interior of a metal building on Rogers’ property with what appears to be seven cherry master style slot machines, the affidavit says. The photographs also show “10 leather chairs, a poker table with several ornate
wood boxes lying on top of it, which would appear to contain chips.”
Posing as an interested buyer, an FBI investigator toured the house Nov. 14. The investigator saw slot machines in the property’s metal building along with two safes about five feet tall each, according to the affidavit. Another safe about three feet tall with poker chips next to it was found in a bedroom closet.
Seizures of trash on Dec.
8 and 15found more notes describing gambling transactions. The Dec. 15 records included National Football League betting sheets and detailed notes of horse races and whether a bet was placed, the affidavit says. Another seizure of trash on Jan. 19 found more such records along with betting sheets for college football.
Betting averaged about $1 million a year from 2012 through 2015, the civil forfeiture cases claim.