Defense lawyer Thomas Lesser said Cafeno's was a legal business and state action was inappropriate.
Steven Sheldon, left, and Stephen Megliola, co-owners of the Cafeno's Internet Cafe, appear in Hampden Country Superior Court for their arraignments on gambling charges Wednesday morning.SPRINGFIELD – A Westfield man and his business partner on Wednesday in Hampden Superior Court denied charges of running an illegal gambling operation at a now-closed Internet cafe in Chicopee.
Steven Sheldon, 48, of Westfield, owner of the cafe, and his business partner, Steven Megliola, 52, of Longmeadow, were indicted in November on charges of organizing or promoting gambling services and operating an illegal lottery.
Their business – Cafeno's Cyber Cafe at 76 Main St. – closed in March after it was raided by state police.
Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder accepted the agreed recommendation from prosecution and defense the men be free on their own recognizance with no conditions.
Sheldon was also indicted for allowing lotteries in a building and the sale and advertising of lottery tickets.
Their corporation, Cafeno's Inc., faces the same charges as Sheldon in the case brought by state Attorney General Martha M. Coakley's office.
Assistant Attorney General Lee Hettinger, chief of Coakley's Western Massachusetts office, said there are thousands of pages of discovery, or information, in the case and he has turned 4,000 pages over to defense lawyers with more to come.
All lawyers asked that the case be put on a slower court schedule than such a case would normally fall under and Kinder agreed, saying, "I understand this is an unusual case."
The next court date is a pre-trial hearing on May 18.
Thomas Lesser is representing Sheldon and Cafeno's Inc., and William Lyons represents Megliola.
Lesser, outside the courtroom after the arraignment, said, "In our opinion Cafeno's was a legal Internet cafe, it is protected by Massachusetts law with regard to Internet cafes, with regard to sweepstakes events. There are any number of cafes which are still operating throughout the commonwealth at this point in time, and we're going to litigate this strenuously. We expect to be found not guilty at the end of the day."
He said there were only two search warrants executed by the attorney general throughout the state that day, Cafeno's and one in Fall River, even though there are many Internet cafes operating then and operating today. "In fact, the attorney general had given an opinion prior to this event (the raid) stating that such cafes appear to be legal," he said.
Patrons look in the windows of Cafeno's Cyber Cafe at 76 Main St., Chicopee, soon after it was closed by the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office."They were operating in the open, everybody knew that they were operating, the state police were advised that they were operating, at no point during all the months of operation did anyone suggest anything illegal was being done here," Lesser said. "They never received a notice from the attorney general saying, 'Wait a second, stop doing what you're doing, it's illegal.' "
Lesser said, "The first notice they had was when state troopers came, seized all the computers, seized all the records, seized everything in the establishment. That was inappropriate in our opinion. If the attorney general thought something illegal was being done they should have been called in to discuss it."
At the time of the indictments, Coakley said, "This cyber cafe was nothing more than an illegal, unregulated slot parlor with no protections for consumers. We allege that these defendants operated a gambling facility in direct violation of existing Massachusetts law."
Under state law, it is illegal to run or promote a gambling operation, the attorney general said. The current gambling law in this case points to the existence of an illegal "lottery," according to the attorney general.
The definition of a lottery includes a payment to play, a prize, and some element of chance, she said.
Coakley's office closed down Cafeno's on March 31 and confiscated some video games as part of an investigation of possible gaming violations, officials said.
Coakley said that customers at Cafeno's paid only for the right to gamble online and not, as the operators claim, to use the Internet and play a free sweepstakes.
Investigators allege that "no purchase required" opportunities were trivial and insignificant, and gambling was the only clear purpose at Cafeno's, Coakley said.
Legislation to ban Internet slot cafes is languishing on Beacon Hill, allowing several of the businesses to continue to run in Western Massachusetts amid legal questions about their operations. With fanfare and support from the attorney general, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo in mid-July filed the bill to shut down the cyber cafes.
Since then, despite the powerful backing, the bill inched ahead through the legislative process. The state Legislature voted on Oct. 27 to send the proposal to the Judiciary Committee. The bill probably will not receive a public hearing until early this year, Alexis Tkachuk, chief of staff for the committee, said in November.
In November, Coakley's office said it has "active and ongoing" investigations into cafes across the state. "We are doing this one by one. Each one is a question of fact," Coakley said.