By Samuel Van Blaricom
WOODLAND, CA – Verapong Sukpornchai, after a preliminary hearing in Yolo County Superior Court Friday, faces a number of charges, including a felony count of intent to defraud, after allegedly using someone else’s identification to get a rewards card and gambling credit at Cache Creek Casino Resort—he had previously been banned from the establishment.
Sukpornchai allegedly used an ID that he found in Thunder Valley Casino to create a new rewards account, which gives new members a small sum to gamble with at the casino’s expense.
Once he had exhausted these funds, he continued gambling in his own name, which is how the casino discovered he had been banned. They put him in a holding cell, where he was later transferred to police.
In addition to intent to defraud, the defendant is also charged with misdemeanor trespassing, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, said Deputy District Attorney Jordan Greenberg.
Deputy Public Defender Daniel Hutchinson attempted to get the felony fraud count reduced to a misdemeanor, arguing the basis of the charge is that Cache Creek “gave him $5 or $10 of free gambling” and that it is “misdemeanor conduct, regardless of what Mr. Sukpornchai’s record is.”
Sukpornchai has two prior felony convictions for identity theft.
DDA Greenberg responded “the defendant had multiple pieces of ID that belonged to different people” and that “we can derive from the fact that he has all of these IDs … that he has been using these other people’s cards in other instances.”
PD Hutchinson also stated issues he had with the trespassing charge, saying that in order for the charge to apply, it requires that “the defendant did actually damage the [property owner’s] property right.”
He then asked, “Where is there evidence of specific intent to damage a property right?”
According to PD Hutchinson, Cache Creek consistently misapplies this trespassing statute when arresting banned guests and the District Attorney’s office frequently and incorrectly prosecutes these individuals due to the requirement that he said Sukpornchai did not satisfy.
The PD added the complication that Sukpornchai, who is not a native English speaker and was sitting with a Thai interpreter during the hearing, believed that the ban was over after two years and that he was no longer excluded from the property. This, he claims, is why Sukpornchai resumed gambling in his own name.
Judge Peter Williams was unwilling to adjust the charges to Sukpornchai, ruling that “it does appear that the only reason why he only did a free play as the extent of this particular instance [of fraud] is because he was caught” and that he would be willing to revisit the wobbler during sentencing if it came to that.
The next court date for arraignment prior to trial will be Nov. 10.
