Sperry woman charged with participating in illegal gambling scheme

Saturday, February 16th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ Federal prosecutors have charged a Sperry woman with participating in a scheme that featured the illegal operation of video gambling machines in bars, clubs and lounges in northeastern Oklahoma.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tulsa also charged Janet Leigh Ward with filing a false federal income tax form for allegedly underreporting nearly $100,000 in income from 1996 to 1998, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McLoughlin said Friday.

According to an FBI affidavit, Ward, 42, is the ex-wife of the late Arnold D. Ward. The document states that she succeeded him as the head of AAA Vending & Distributors in Tulsa before selling the business in 1997 to Milton Loyd Jones.

Jones, 55, was sentenced in September to five years' probation for supplying gambling machines to bars and splitting profits with their operators.

Between April 1997 and September 1998, undercover officers with the Tulsa County sheriff's deputies and federal agents visited nine bars and lounges where video gambling machines had been placed by AAA Vending, according to the affidavit.

One gambling machine would typically generate about $400 in profit a week, federal agents estimated. The affidavit states that using a ``very conservative'' estimate of 60 machines and accounting for the 50-50 split with bar owners, AAA Vending could have generated about $624,000 in illegal income annually.

Mickey Ward broke gambling laws from at least 1994 until his December 1997 death, the affidavit stated. He allegedly had as much as $236,000 in cash contained in pickle jars buried on his property in Tulsa.

Janet Ward is the 25th person charged in the investigation. McLoughlin said Friday that two more people who had ties to AAA Vending could be charged.