Man Pleads Guilty in Gambling Operation Involving Haddonfield Man

A Gloucester County man has pleaded guilty to running an illegal poker club out of a storefront in Runnemede, as well as an illicit off-shore gambling website, Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman announced on Friday.

Thomas Rand, 43, of Williamstown, pleaded guilty today to an accusation charging him with third-degree promoting gambling.

Under the plea agreement, the state will recommend that Rand be sentenced to a term of probation conditioned upon him serving 270 days in the county jail.

Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 3.

Rand admitted that he and 33-year-old Ryan Dion, of Blackwood, operated the Runnemede Social Club as an illegal gambling club inside a storefront at 707 B East Clements Bridge Road.

Dion, pleaded guilty on July 18 to promoting gambling and faces a recommended sentence of three years of probation with 364 days in the county jail.

The partners profited by taking a portion of the money out of the pot with each hand of poker played.

The club was open Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings into the early morning hours, and ran up to three Texas Hold’em, no limit poker games at a time.

Three other men who were dealers and cashiers at the club also pleaded guilty to promoting gambling.

August Gibbons, 62, of Stratford, pleaded guilty on June 20 and faces up to 364 days in the county jail.

The other two men, Nicholas Gibbons, 26, of Stratford, and Gregory Henkel, 41, of Haddonfield, face three years of non-custodial probation.

Nicholas Gibbons is August Gibbons’s son.

Rand also admitted that he ran an illegal off-shore gambling website called 365Sportsbetting.com, from which he collected 10 percent of every losing bet.

“These defendants operated an old-school gambling club, complete with cash cage, poker tables and a wide-screen TV for patrons to watch the sports on which they gambled,” Hoffman said. “We are going to continue to make every effort to remove gambling from the shadows of the black market underworld; in other words, we will not tolerate unregulated illegal gambling in New Jersey.”

“Rand and his co-defendants were charged after an undercover State Police detective infiltrated this so-called social club, playing in illegal poker games and placing bets on Rand’s off-shore gambling website,” Elie Honig, Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, said. “We discovered that, behind the facade of a legitimate business, these defendants actually ran a criminal gambling ring.”

The storefront for the Runnemede Social Club had a sign for the health club “Curves,” but inside were three regulation-sized poker tables, a “cash cage” where poker chips were purchased, and sofas arranged around a large, flat-screen TV.

From December 2013 through March of this year, an undercover State Police detective was able to gain access to the club as a poker player and observe the operation.

The undercover officer participated in a number of poker games during that period, observing all of the defendants in the gambling club routinely cashing players in and out at the cage.

Rand and Dion worked in the cage, as did Henkel.

August and Nicholas Gibbons, as well as John Bahn 28, of Aldan, Pa. were dealers. Bahn faces a pending charge of third-degree promoting gambling.

After becoming acquainted with the undercover officer, Rand invited him to set up a $1,500 account to bet on professional and collegiate sports events on his website 365Sportsbetting.com.

The undercover officer paid Rand $1,000 in cash, and Rand extended him $500 in credit.

Rand provided his bank account number so that the undercover officer could settle up with Rand online by transferring money into the account.

The undercover officer placed a number of sports bets on the website and settled up his losses with Rand.

“Illegal gambling operations have no place in our communities,” Col. Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said. “These types of operations often lead to violence and a multitude of criminal activity. I commend our partners and our detectives for their outstanding work in this investigation.”

The attached photo of Gregory Henkel was provided by the Attorney General’s Office