Former Georgia police, public officials charged with racketeering, Macon DA says
A former Georgia sheriff’s captain is among four public officials accused of racketeering in an alleged tax-evasion and money-laundering scheme involving operators and licensees of convenience store gaming machines who prosecutors contend were part of an illegal statewide gambling enterprise.
Prosecutors claim some participants in the alleged operation failed to pay sales taxes they collected over a 27-month span in excess of $3 million.
The allegations brought by Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke and outlined in a 27-count indictment returned Tuesday by Bibb grand jurors include charges that Larry Todd Mashburn, while working as a Bulloch County sheriff’s captain in 2017, was “provided ... with a watch, loans and gifts of money.”
The indictment — which names multiple coin-operated game machine operators and convenience marts from Macon to Savannah and other parts of east, southeast and Middle Georgia — goes on to describe alleged bribery said to involve Mashburn and a gaming license holder in the Statesboro area named Nital “Nick” Raval.
The indictment states that along with gifts, Raval also provided the sheriff’s captain with “the use of vehicle(s) by inducing the reasonable belief that the giving of those things would influence the performance of any official action including ... (Mashburn) providing (Raval) with a Bulloch County Sheriff’s identification card and badge, and assistance with traffic citations and assistance with law enforcement protection.”
The Bibb DA’s office in statement Wednesday said Raval also “bribed Mashburn in 2017 with ... liquor.”
Mashburn, 50, who became a Bulloch deputy in 1998 and was an FBI National Academy graduate, left the department in 2018 to become safety director for that county’s public schools, the Statesboro Herald reported two years ago.
He faces charges on two counts of racketeering, according to the indictment.
Another defendant named in the indictment who is accused of two racketeering counts includes an ex-Georgia Department of Revenue agent, Ronald C. Huckaby, whose arrest in the summer of 2019 was part of the Bibb DA’s probe of gaming operations and was reported by news outlets statewide.
Two other former public officials, Ennis Odom, who had been police chief of the small Macon County town of Ideal northwest of Montezuma, and an ex-Bibb sheriff’s deputy, Rahim McCarley, were also indicted Tuesday.
Odom faces two racketeering allegations and also a charge of making false statements regarding taxes.
Similarly, McCarley faces two racketeering charges and a pair of charges of false statements regarding taxes.
In a video news conference on Wednesday, Cooke said for some in the gaming realm “there’s this expectation of getting away with. That just because you pay off someone in law enforcement, you think you can escape justice.”
Cooke added: “There were four different current or former law enforcement officers indicted in this case, and without commenting on any person in particular, I can tell you that the more we investigate this, the more public officials we find who can be involved.”
In all, 16 people were indicted, the majority of them associated with food marts that have so-called amusement gaming machines, which are legal. However, operators are prohibited from giving cash to winners. Instead, winners may receive prizes such as vouchers for store merchandise.
The alleged crimes — bribery, money laundering, tax evasion and illegal gambling — involving nearly five dozen stores across the region were said to have happened between early 2017 and the spring of 2019.
According to a statement from Cooke’s office, the business “hubs” were in Macon, Statesboro, Savannah and Brunswick.
Some of the Macon stores mentioned in the indictment and said to be part of the alleged enterprise include: RJS Food Mart at 2311 Pio Nono Ave.; Exxon Food mart at 3170 Millerfield Road; Quick Serve Food Mart at 1106 Rocky Creek Road; Sunrise Stores at 3750 Mercer University Drive; and a Citgo at 4535 Hartley Bridge Road.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 2:24 PM.