Regulators question sentence

Monday, Dec. 13, 2004 | 9:23 a.m.

ST. PAUL -- State gambling officials are upset over a light sentence for a woman convicted of felony gambling fraud.

Karleen Warnick, 60, of Northrop, was convicted of the theft of $44,000 in prizes from pulltabs she sold on behalf of the Fairmont Youth Hockey Association. She got four days in jail, 20 days of community service and three years of probation. Restitution was not ordered, but could be in the future.

"This hurts. It doesn't send a message out to other opportunists" against stealing from pulltab games, said Frank Ball, director of alcohol and gambling enforcement in the Department of Public Safety. "The likelihood of getting caught isn't all that frequent."

Martin County Attorney Terry Viesselman said he didn't recommend a sentence as part of a plea agreement, but Warnick was evaluated as unlikely to commit more crimes and was in poor health. The charge is similar to felony theft, which generally gets a light sentence, he said.

He said that, while Warnick "was unduly enriched," the judge's concern was that "no one's had a loss yet. She was playing the pulltabs. Her winners, if she hadn't played them, someone else would have got them. The state didn't lose, the hockey club didn't lose."