Jeffrey Castardi, who headed a Denver gambling and loan-sharking operation where the clientele included well-known sports and media personalities, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for racketeering.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said Castardi’s operation collected significant amounts of money between May 2003 and late 2008 through a “complex, persistent and intimidating system of individual debt collectors, front businesses and various bank accounts.”
Suthers announced the sentence on Monday.
Castardi, 48, had pleaded guilty in October to one count of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Act and faced a potential maximum sentence of 24 years.
The gambling ring he headed was located at the Gin Rummy Club, 2380 S. Broadway.
The gambling ring was toppled earlier this year as part of a joint effort by the Colorado attorney general, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Denver Police Department and the Colorado Department of Revenue.
Among those who gambled at Castardi’s Gin Rummy Club were former Denver Broncos fullback, author and one-time KCNC-Channel 4 sports anchor Reggie Rivers; former Broncos running back Rod Bernstine; Francois Safieddine, president of the Monarck nightclub in Denver; and John Sacha, a pain-medicine doctor who teaches poker strategy on a “Dr. Poker” instructional video.
Castardi, who authorities say has connections to the Gambino crime family, ran the social club as a front for unlimited-stakes poker games and sports betting. The activity fueled a lucrative loan-sharking operation, investigators said.
According to an indictment returned by the state grand jury, Castardi was the ringleader of an organization that involved gambling, bookmaking and loan sharking — all of which Castardi learned during his youth and early adult years when he lived in the New York City area.
Investigators said Castardi told people who engaged in his high-stakes poker and sports-betting or bookmaking activities that the Gin Rummy Club was a Mafia or mob-affiliated establishment.
Castardi’s use of this tactic was designed to strengthen the intimidating influence of the Gin Rummy Club and also to further the success of the club’s illicit business methods, according to investigators.
A key to the enterprise, said the grand jury, was a system established at the Gin Rummy Club where poker players and those betting on sports played on credit.
The system was referred to as playing on the “book.”
The existence of the “book” often led players to accrue significant financial debt to the Gin Rummy Club and Castardi. Some players and others then felt it necessary to take out “street loans” that were usually orchestrated and financed by Castardi.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
