Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series examining Colorado’s $110 million charitable gaming industry.

Howard Geller told police that Big Dog wanted Geller to get some people and head to Akron, Colo., so he hopped into his Dodge Durango along with his buddy, Cricket, and a woman he knew and off they went. 

When the trio got to the tiny northeastern plains town 33 miles east of Fort Morgan, population 1,750, Big Dog handed Cricket and the woman three sets of car keys. 

Apparently Big Dog had provided ½-pound of methamphetamine to an employee at an Akron car dealership and hadn’t been paid. So, the employee gave Big Dog the keys to the three vehicles to settle up. 

It took little time from there to steal the three cars, police records show. 

Driving his own truck away, Geller, who goes by Huey, had done what he’d been asked to do. 

It was October 2004. 

Police and court records show Geller, at the time from Westminster, would plead guilty in Washington County District Court to a felony charge of aggravated motor vehicle theft. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 48 hours of community service. 

Geller never finished either. 

A year later, Geller, then 46 and living in Thornton, had his probation revoked after he was grabbed up in a North Metro Drug Task Force raid in which handguns, methamphetamine and cash were confiscated from his trailer home. 

Geller pleaded guilty in July 2006 in Adams County District Court to felony drug possession with intent to deliver, court records show. 

While awaiting sentencing on that case, Arvada Police arrested Geller in October 2006 during a different drug raid that yielded nearly 10 times the amount of methamphetamine taken from him in the North Metro case, court and police records show. 

Geller pleaded guilty in Jefferson County District Court to felony drug possession with intent to deliver. 

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. 

He was released in December 2013, Colorado Department of Corrections records show. 

Four years later, Geller signed an application to be certified as a charitable games manager in Colorado, affirming under penalty of perjury that he had no felony record in his past. He did it twice more when he renewed his certification, the most recent in July. 

Records show Geller has been running bingo games at the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. American Legion Post 11-11 in Broomfield since 2017. 

Some rules not observed 

Felons are prohibited from being games managers in Colorado. 

But no one is checking. 

A three-month Denver Gazette investigation into Colorado’s charitable gaming industry found its rules so lax and littered with loopholes that it took little effort for a journalist to identify convicted felons certified as games managers. 

Geller is one of at least a dozen managers with felony records who have been certified by the state to run bingo and raffle games that are the backbone of what is a $100 million a year enterprise. 

Of those identified by The Gazette, Geller is one of three to spend time in prison for their crimes, according to police, court and state corrections department records. 

Two other felons are registered sex offenders, records show. 

And it’s likely there are many more. 

Athough the Gazette found numerous instances of felons and convicted criminals running charitable games, there is no indication that any funds were stolen.

Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold is responsible for regulating charitable gaming in Colorado, a job enshrined in the state Constitution in 1958. 

Colorado is the only state that regulates charitable gaming that way. Most use departments of revenue or gaming that also oversee casinos and other related businesses. 

Griswold’s office said it does what is required by law and regulation when checking someone’s background for certified games manager. 

That means it does nothing. 

Aside from an applicant’s signature affirming they have no felony background, the only other requirement is to take a training class and pass an exam. 

That seems easy enough. 

Colorado currently has more than 3,000 people certified as games managers, according to a copy of the list obtained by The Denver Gazette. 

There is also no requirement that any nonprofit organization sponsoring someone to be a games manager do a background check, although other states such as Delaware and Iowa, do. 

Nebraska not only requires applicants to submit their fingerprints, but disqualifies anyone with a willful failure to make required financial payments such as a credit card bill or any form of tax bill. 

“Charitable gaming nationwide is vetted pretty strongly, and you assume that when someone has a license they’re legitimate and have gone through that process,” said Mary Magnuson, vice president of government affairs at Arrow International Inc., one of the world’s largest producers of bingo gaming materials. 

“Some states, such as Minnesota, have always treated charitable gaming as regular gaming and don’t mess around,” she said. “Games managers are licensed and go through full background checks. No felonies, period. No misdemeanors involving fraud or theft.” 

‘They gave me the license’ 

That is not the case in Colorado. 

In fact, The Gazette found at least three dozen certified games managers with misdemeanor records involving theft or fraud. The only reason they avoid disqualification – the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor – is the amount involved. 

Dozens more had histories of unpaid bills, bankruptcies and legal collection judgments against them, according to a review of Colorado Judicial Department records. 

That infuriated Huey Geller, the drug dealer. 

“I have no problem ‘fessing up to what I did or did not do,” Geller said. “I never was involved with theft or fraud of money and you mean to say that a guy who stole but didn’t steal that much can be certified and me, with a drug conviction, can’t? That’s just stupid.” 

Geller said he was misled when applying for games manager certification, believing that only felony gambling convictions were disqualifiers, and that any conviction older than 10 years was negated. 

“I applied, took the test and they gave me the license,” he said. “It’s not like my name’s not out there.” 

Another name in plain sight is Lydell Dexter Tillman, a 45-year-old Colorado Springs man with a 13-year history of prison time, much of it for fraud and drug convictions, records show. 

Efforts to reach Tillman were unsuccessful. He did not return messages or emails. 

The first conviction came in 2001 when he pleaded guilty in El Paso County District Court to felony drug possession and was sentenced to four years in prison. 

The next, a guilty plea in 2004 for passing a half dozen bad checks on a closed bank account, netted him four more years in prison. 

More bad checks and another guilty plea in 2019, this time from a religious organization – Eternal Love Organization – that he created, brought more prison time. 

State business records show he somehow formed ELO in April 2017 while still in state prison on felony theft charges. 

Tillman was certified as a games manager in 2003, his signature on the bottom of his application attesting to a clean criminal history. 

“Colorado is pretty tough vetting organizations, what’s going in or going out,” said Rich Lemon, president of the Colorado Bingo Association and a longtime manufacturer of bingo game supplies. 

Games managers are responsible for making sure the initial amount of money necessary to play bingo is at hand, often thousands of dollars in cash. The managers handle all supervisory aspects of the bingo night. 

“At the end of the day they’d be the person to take the cash to the bank, or a ton of cash that needs to be stored overnight for the next day,” Lemon said. “It’s a big job.” 

Registered sex offender 

Unity Spiritual Center in the Rockies is a Colorado Springs-based church that’s been running bingo nights for years at Carefree Bingo on the east side of town near Palmer Park. 

The group does well, with gross revenues surpassing $1.2 million the past three years. Of that, the group kept about $70,000 each year, according to its bingo coordinator Don Turner, making up about a third of its annual funding. 

Thing is, since at least 2017, the group has partly relied on member Don Defore to help run those bingo nights. 

What the congregation didn’t know – Turner said the pastor was aware – was Defore in 2007, while serving in the U.S. Air Force, had pleaded guilty in El Paso County District Court to sex assault on a child. The abuse, according to police records, allegedly went on for years. 

Defore, 56, is a registered sex offender, records show. 

“It was kept confidential and it’s the first I heard of it,” Turner said. “I didn’t know if anyone checked. It’s not something I think about and basically we screwed up.” 

The church has since begun background checks on all its bingo volunteers – Colorado also prohibits volunteers who work bingo games from having a felony background, but there are no applications and it’s difficult to know who they are. 

“I think the integrity needs to be there,” Turner said. “People need to trust that it’s legitimate and above board.” 

Regarding Defore, who did not respond to Denver Gazette efforts to reach him, Turner said it’s a difficult spot for someone wanting to live a better life. 

“They don’t have a chance to pay their debt to society and be done with it and it doesn’t seem fair. There should be a way to pay it back,” Turner said. “But if we saw that background, we’d have an issue and pass on that person.” 

Not dissimilarly, Salvatore Russo, a 46-year-old games manager for the Northglenn High School Band Boosters, spent 18 months in state prison on a felony conviction for attempted sexual assault. 

Initially sentenced to 10 years of intensive probation in 2000, it was revoked when Russo failed to register as a sex offender and he was sent to Cañon City, Adams County District Court records show. 

He also filed for personal bankruptcy in 2013, U.S. Bankruptcy Court records in Denver show. 

Colorado certified him as a games manager for the boosters group in 2023, records show. 

The group is consistently among the state’s top bingo revenue producers, taking in more than $1.4 million the past two years, state financial records show. 

Neither Russo nor a representative from the boosters group responded to efforts by The Denver Gazette to reach them. 

No mandatory reporting system 

Then there’s Thomas Zerbest, 56, in Golden. 

Records show Zerbest has been a certified games manager since 2016 and has worked games for American Legion Post 21 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 417, both in Golden. 

But records show Zerbest pleaded guilty in Jefferson County District Court in 2005 to a felony charge of attempting to obtain drugs with a phony prescription and was put on a year’s probation. 

Additionally, Zerbest pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge in Arizona that same year as part of a case that began in 2000, records there show. He was similarly sentenced to probation. 

Zerbest did not respond to efforts to reach him, but the Secretary of State’s office confirmed he contacted that office and rescinded his games manager certification soon afterward. 

Said Lemon of the Bingo Association: “Anyone sketchy, no matter how slight, I don’t think we need them, and there should be a way to be sure, to double-check. Clearly, it’s not happening.” 

Colorado also doesn’t have a mandatory reporting system for anyone who is a certified games manager to tell state officials of any new convictions. Theoretically, it would happen when they apply for recertification in a few years. 

That’s the case for Juan de la Garza, a 32-year-old certified games manager in Keenesburg. Records show he’s been certified since 2022 and working games at the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars Post 1781 there and is listed in its tax records as its quartermaster. 

De la Garza pleaded guilty in July 2023 to a pair of felony charges for attempted sexual assault. Police reports show the victim told them some of the contact had occurred at the post. 

He was sentenced to 59 days in jail and is currently serving a 10-year probation term and is a registered sex offender, records show. 

At the time, de la Garza was already serving a probation term on a different felony conviction out of Larimer County District Court, one that was deemed a deferred sentence, which means the case would be dismissed if he stayed out of trouble. 

Neither De la Garza nor the VFW post responded to efforts to reach them. 

The Denver Gazette also identified two other certified games managers with felony convictions and deferred sentences, meaning the conviction disappears if they stay out of trouble for a certain period of time, typically three years. 

Few violations of charitable gaming regulations are issued by the secretary of state’s office, according to state records. Just 4 enforcement actions occurred since 2023, all based on complaints filed with regulators. Three were procedural problems with how the nonprofit ran its games and one was for a group wrongly paying its volunteers.

None were for having a games manager with a prohibited criminal record.