Rosemount Man Involved in Extortion Scheme Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion

A Rosemount man who pleaded guilty last spring to coercion in an extortion plot that ended with the suicide of a Bloomington man pleaded guilty this week to failing to pay taxes on almost $300,000 that he earned gambling at a Minnesota casino.

Rickey Eugene Pouncil, 47, was sentenced in August to 13 months in prison after pleading guilty to coercion in the extortion case. He was sentenced this week to six months on the tax charges, which will run concurrently with his sentence at the prison in Faribault.

Pouncil, who spent more than $2 million at Mystic Lake casino between 2004 and 2008, was charged with five counts of failing to file tax returns for those years, all gross misdemeanors. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, a sixth felony charge was dismissed.

According to the criminal complaint, Pouncil’s tax evasion was uncovered when Bloomington authorities began investigating the $500,000 extortion scheme, in which . 

Authorities said Pouncil, Blair Spear Gura and Christina Lynn Artac threatened to release sexually explicit photos of Kreya to his wife if he didn’t pay them $500,000. Kreya shot himself on May 10, 2010, leaving behind a note that explained the extortion scheme.

Among the claims in the tax-evasion complaint is one in which authorities say Kreya paid Pouncil $65,000 in September 2009 as part of the extortion scheme, and Pouncil failed to report it as income for that tax year.

An investigation into the extortion scheme turned up evidence that Pouncil was a regular blackjack player at Mystic Lake Casino and was a member of Club Mystic. The casino’s records showed that Pouncil made significant cash and chip “buy-ins” at the casino between 2001 and 2008; a table attached to the complaint shows that his cash buy-in totals between 2001 and 2008 amounted to $2,099.731.

The extent of his gambling activity was illustrated by an incident on May 8, 2010, in which Pouncil’s girlfriend was involved in an altercation when she tried to borrow a cell-phone charger from the casino’s lost-and-found department, according to the complaint.

When casino employees wouldn’t let her borrow the charger, she became upset “and could be heard from some distance yelling obscenities at casino staff,” the complaint says. Security officers were called, and the woman called Pouncil on her cell phone to complain about how poorly she was being treated, then handed the phone to a security supervisor.

“She says you don’t care,” the complaint says Pouncil told the supervisor. “I’m elite and have spent millions at this casino, so you are going to care.”

Casino records show that Pouncil earned $292,470 from gambling activities between 2003 and 2008.

When authorities interviewed him about the extortion plot, he claimed to be working part time at a Minneapolis business called Defiant Tattoo. Other individuals told police that he worked at various times as a personal trainer and a pimp, and that he owned an escort service.

The complaint says that beginning in 2003, Pouncil’s girlfriend approached two co-workers, asking for loans. She told them “various hardship stories,” including the pending loss of her Rosemount home, a need to pay off people from Florida who were coming to break Pouncil’s legs because of gambling debts, and various extortion schemes, according to the complaint.

Between May 2003 and February 2004, the two co-workers loaned her about $120,000, and another $139,750 between December 2003 and April 2004. On each occasion, the two were instructed on how to structure payments to Pouncil and his girlfriend; on several occasions, one of the women handed “large sums of money” directly to Pouncil, but all checks went to his girlfriend, the complaint says.

Many of the larger loans were broken up into multiple transactions to avoid triggering financial institution reporting requirements, the complaint charges.