LV bookmaking company sues workers who defected

Grace Leong

Monday, Oct. 25, 1999 | 11:27 a.m.

National Sports Services Inc. of Las Vegas is seeking an injunction against five former employees, prohibiting them from selling and disseminating its customer lists and trade secrets, soliciting its customers and engaging in any competing sports information business in Nevada until Oct. 15, 2000.

In a Clark County District Court lawsuit, National Sports said the defendants left the company around Oct. 15, breached their employment contracts by misappropriating National Sports' confidential information and allegedly used this information in an unlicensed telemarketing business called Monaco Sports.

"We discovered the defendants were marketing sports information services under Danny Monaco, who owns Monaco Sports, a handicapper business," said Marc Gordon, National Sports' attorney.

National Sports said the defendants, Perfecto Bobadilla, Bernard Peraino, Roy Perry, Joseph Panzica and Michael Roshkind, illegally operated and unfairly competed against the company when they allegedly failed to obtain a state-required telemarketing licence and a $50,000 surety bond for "Monaco Sports."

The suit said the defendants were prohibited from disclosing, using, publishing or disseminating National Sports' proprietary information and from becoming involved with any sports information business in Nevada for one year after ceasing employment with National Sports.

"National Sports' former employees are not allowed to compete for one year because of the amount of time and money invested to train these salesmen," Gordon said. "We provide them with customers and help them to make a very good living and they agree upon termination to not use our information or join other competitors."

"National Sports is a 25-year-old business. It is fully licenced, with publications and Internet sites that have approximately a million hits a month. So we have no choice but to protect the business by making salesmen sign these employment agreements."

National Sports also alleged the defendants provided customers with allegedly stolen sports information and sabotaged its business by allegedly telling customers to dispute or "charge back" the payment for the purchase of the information on their credit cards.

The defendants could not be reached for comment.