Gambling case won’t go to trial
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HANCOCK COUNTY — The gambling case against a New Palestine man accused of running a lucrative bookmaking operation will not go to trial.
Officials from the Hancock County prosecutor’s office and the attorney for Bret A. Wells have reached a plea agreement, causing a trial slated to begin Tuesday, Nov. 30, to be canceled.
A change-of-plea hearing is now set for Thursday, Dec. 9, in Hancock County Circuit Court following a final pretrial conference in the judge’s chambers late last week, court documents state.
Details of the plea agreement have not been released and won’t be until the court either accepts or rejects the deal during the hearing. Wells is facing a Level 5 felony charge of corrupt business influence and five Level 6 felonies surrounding theft and professional gambling.
It is not known whether any of the charges will be dismissed as part of the agreement or whether Wells will spend any time in jail.
The case first to came to light in the fall of 2019. According to an affidavit filed by investigators with the Indiana Gaming Commission, the bookmaking operation brought in $17 million in a three-year period and netted Wells more than $1.8 million in profits.
Since then, his attorney, James H. Voyles, has worked to weaken the case against Wells.
In June, in response to a motion by the defense, Circuit Court Judge Scott Sirk decided to throw out some evidence obtained by investigators, ruling they had illegally searched Wells’ cellphone as they gathered evidence.
The judge, however, denied a motion by Wells to suppress other evidence obtained in searches of his residence, vehicle and his business.
Chief deputy prosecutor Aimee Herring said at the time the ruling would have an impact on the evidence available to present to a jury if the case proceeded to trial, but she felt the state still had a good case against Wells.
The gaming commission began investigating Wells in July 2018 for alleged gambling-related offenses.
In court documents, investigators described an operation that in total made more than 176,000 betting transactions starting in January 2016. The case was based in part on information from a former business partner of Wells and surveillance by gaming commission investigators.
The former business partner, who was not identified in court documents, saw Wells counting large sums of cash earned from his gambling operation, the affidavit said. The former business partner also said he went with Wells to pick up money and that Wells handled the gambling via two websites. Text messages obtained from Wells’ phone showed he directed bettors to those sites and provided passwords so they could access them, according to the affidavit. The text messages also detailed the network of bettors he worked with.
The Wells case was investigated shortly before the laws involving sports gambling changed in the state. Indiana lawmakers approved a wide-ranging gambling bill in April 2019 that was signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb in May 2019. The new law legalized sports wagering after six other states moved quickly following a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing sports gambling nationwide.
