2 plead guilty in bingo scam

INDIANAPOLIS -- A college professor and a retired accountant pleaded guilty Wednesday to felony charges in a scam that skimmed more than $3.5 million in profits from bingo parlors.\nFred Draper, a suspended Indiana State University physical education professor, and Willie Ryan, a retired Eli Lilly and Co. accountant, were ringleaders in the 2001 Marion County bingo scam, prosecutors said.\nMarion Superior Court Judge Patricia Gifford ordered Ryan, 60, to serve a four-year suspended prison sentence, perform 200 hours of community service and pay $300,000 in restitution.\nDraper, who is ill, is scheduled to be sentenced in early May. According to his plea agreement, he will pay $400,000 in restitution.\nDraper and Ryan are the last of the 11 people charged in a two-year probe to enter pleas.\nAnother ringleader, Michael Frechette, a former Medford, Mass., police officer, signed a plea agreement in August to repay $1 million and spend up to eight years in prison.\nProsecutors say Draper, Ryan and Frechette siphoned $3.57 million from pull-tab sales at the four bingo halls. The trio took their cut of bingo parlor cash and kept records using a handwritten code, court records show.\nThey made the games appear less profitable by laundering money through a check cashing service and destroying some paperwork.\nThe money that was skimmed included $191,000 from the Consortium Foundation, which owes more than $13,000 in tuition for three scholarship recipients, according to court documents.