Mayor fights forfeiture attempt
The mayor of Fayette City, admitted to a pretrial diversionary program for setting up an illegal lottery, is arguing that more than $60,000 seized by investigators from a lock box in his home is his property and should not be forfeited to the state.
Herbert Vargo Jr., 46, was admitted to the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program for one year by a Fayette County judge last fall, and if he completes the program, his record will be expunged. Admission to the program is generally reserved for first-time, nonviolent offenders and is not an admission of guilt.
As such, Vargo is arguing against a move by prosecutors to force Vargo to forfeit money seized during their investigation.
Vargo was charged in 2011 after a state police trooper alleged he took bets on lottery numbers and paid out more than the state’s lottery while running a numbers game from his newsstand in Fayette City.
As part of their investigation, police alleged that they found records of numbers and the amount people bet on them at Vargo’s Newsstand on Main Street and at his home on Connellsville Street in the borough.
Trooper Raymond Stewart testified previously that in addition to multiple games of chance recovered from both Vargo’s business and home, police seized more than $1,400 from envelopes and multiple stashes at the newsstand, nearly $60,000 from a locked box from Vargo’s home and nearly $900 from Vargo’s pockets.
Stewart testified under cross examination by Vargo’s attorney, Samuel J. Davis, during a forfeiture hearing held Wednesday before Judge Steve P. Leskinen that during his two-year investigation, he never saw any illegal transactions between Vargo and his customers, and he had no evidence linking the money seized from the lock box to any illegal lotteries.
Vargo testified before Leskinen that while he might have helped out some local organizations selling tickets for various fundraisers, he never ran an illegal lottery.
He testified that the money in his lock box was savings he and his wife and his in-laws had put away, and that the money was not obtained illegally. He could not account for various recorded conversations between himself and a confidential informant that appeared to indicate that he was running such an illegal betting operation.
Davis argued that there needs to be some proportionality of the scope of the crime proven and the amount of the forfeiture.
Leskinen will rule on the matter at a later date.