Witnesses criticize ex-lottery chief

Friday, September 29, 2006 posted 12:16 PM EDT

Former state lottery commissioner Kevin L. Geddings didn’t take the stand Thursday in his federal trial, but that didn’t stop prosecutors from seeking to use his words against him.

Prosecutors introduced documents and witnesses who spoke to Geddings’ lack of candor in his business dealings with Scientific Games, one of two major lottery companies that was vying for state lottery contracts while he was on the commission.

• Scientific Games’ chief counsel, Ira Raphaelson, told jurors that Geddings said he did not disclose his business dealings in order to win a seat on the commission.

• Perry Newson, executive director of the N.C. Board of Ethics, testified that Geddings should have disclosed his Scientific Games business on a required statement of economic interest.

• Geddings’ comments at the lottery commission’s first meeting, in which he spoke only of meeting with lottery companies, not working for them.

Geddings, 41, is charged with eight counts of fraud. Prosecutors say he participated in a scheme to deprive the public of his honest services by hiding his financial ties to Scientific Games as he gained a seat on the commission. He faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count. Geddings has maintained he complied with the state’s financial disclosure laws and did not take part in a scheme to win a seat on the commission.

“It’s a nitpicking disagreement over a form,” Geddings said in an interview Thursday. “There’s still no evidence that I took a bribe or had a scheme to get Scientific Games the lottery business.”

Geddings served as former S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges’ chief of staff, and worked to get a lottery passed in South Carolina.

In court, Raphaelson testified that Geddings expressed concern when the company sought to disclose the $24,500 it paid to him last year.

“He said to me that he had not disclosed it. If he had, he would not have gotten the job,” Raphaelson, a former U.S. attorney, told jurors.

Raphaelson said that Geddings asked if the company was producing the records in response to a subpoena. When Raphaelson told him that wasn’t the case, Geddings questioned why they had to do that.

Geddings said that Raphaelson had not accurately characterized the phone discussion between them on Oct. 27. He said he opposed releasing the payments because it was confidential information that could cause more clients to leave his public relations firm.

“It’s like being a plastic surgeon and telling who you did nose jobs for,” said Geddings, who has relocated from Charlotte to St. Augustine, Fla.

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