BATH, Maine — Smith-Tobey American Legion Post No. 21 in Bath has pleaded guilty to Class B felony aggravated unlawful gambling for an operation that the district attorney’s office says took in “hundreds of thousands of dollars” over many years.

As a result, Bath’s Memorial Day parade, which the post has sponsored for decades, will not take place, Bath City Manager Bill Giroux confirmed Monday.





“A case of this magnitude is quite rare,” Maine State Police Sgt. Michael Johnston, who led the investigation, said Friday.

Under the terms of a plea agreement, Smith-Tobey Post 21 pleaded guilty on April 29 to one count of Class B felony aggravated unlawful gambling, and the Sagadahoc County district attorney’s office dismissed four additional counts of the Class B crime, as well as two counts of misdemeanor unlawful gambling.

The post was fined $15,000 by the state, and on May 1, it paid a total fee of $18,025, according to court documents.

No individual criminal charges were filed, Johnston said.

“We don’t have any evidence that any one person was benefiting from this,” Sagadahoc County Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Lieberman said. However, Lieberman said, “quite a few people” knew about the activities.

“It’s been going on for years,” he said. “Some of the people who had been interviewed said it pre-dated their involvement with the Legion. I don’t know really what it was used for, and my best guess was it was used to benefit the organization and its activities.”

Court documents did not indicate how the gambling receipts were used.

An anonymous complaint that the American Legion was paying out on video poker games prompted an initial inspection of the Smith-Tobey hall in September, Johnston said Monday.

The Sagadahoc County grand jury indicted the post in February.

“Video poker machines are for entertainment only — you cannot pay out on them,” Johnston said. “If you pay out on them, they’re like a slot machine and it constitutes unlawful gambling. We uncovered evidence of unlawful gambling.”

But Johnston said Smith-Tobey officers “were very forthcoming” during the investigation, which showed that over just one two-year period, the post took in $346,000 in illegal gambling proceeds. The illegal gambling took place over a much longer interval than that two-year stretch.

On April 29, the legion surrendered its license to operate licensed games of chance for 30 months, Johnston said.

“They can be open,” he said. “They just can’t conduct licensed games of chance.”

Smith-Tobey Post Adjutant Michael Frelk notified the city in a May 7 letter that the post would not sponsor this year’s Memorial Day parade because of “severe financial difficulties.” In the letter to city officials, Frelk stated that Smith-Tobey hopes to sponsor Bath’s 2016 Memorial Day parade.

According to the letter, the post “is currently in the process of an operational reorganization. … once Post 21 has recovered and is back on track, we look forward to continuing our relationship with the city.”

Richard Graves, commander of the American Legion, Department of Maine, referred calls to the American Legion’s legislative chairman, William “Chick” Cicciotti of Topsham.

Cicciotti said the plea does not jeopardize the Bath legion’s charter and the state board of the American Legion has not penalized Post 21, although he noted that the executive committee could meet to take action in the future.

Calls to Chris Gillespie, president of Post 21, and to Frelk were not immediately returned on Monday.