PLAINS TOWNSHIP -- Investigators say it's a scheme that went on for nearly a year, from May 2014 to April of last year at Mohegan Sun Pocono in Luzerne County.
Rochelle Poszeluznyj, a beverage server in the casino, Robert Pellegrini, vice president of player development, and a third man, Mark Heltzel, are charged with swindling the casino out of nearly half a million dollars and recent court papers reveal new information about the connections between the three and how investigators say they got caught.
According to court paperwork, when gamblers used their casino cards to pay for drinks, Poszeluznyj would copy the card info and give it to Pellegrini. He would create duplicate cards, add free slot play to the cards, and give the cards to Heltzel to gamble with. The trio allegedly walked off with a payout of almost $419,000.
But how did the three know each other? Who thought it up the scam and how?
State police say it all came out because of a love triangle.
Poszeluznyj was seeing Mark Heltzel and during the same time, they say she had a romantic relationship with another casino employee.
She told that man about the scheme and he says she showed him copied card numbers in her apartment claiming to have taken 50 or more. She also showed him a lock box filled with more than $1,000 she told him was from the scheme.
When things went sour in their relationship, that casino worker went to casino officials about the alleged scam.
According to him, Heltzel and Pellegrini, who were friends, used to meet at a Wilkes-Barre bar or Woodlands Inn in Plains Township to exchange money and they were running the scam before they asked Poszeluznyj to get involved.
