Remodel and Upgrade of a $1.1 million El Dorado Hills home part of IRS Probe

SacBee, Sam Stantonand Denny Walsh, Mar. 23, 2012

As federal prosecutors try to recover $18.6 million allegedly pilfered from the pockets of Thunder Valley Casino owners, the tangled web includes payments of more than $800,000 to the head of the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs' Association, a court affidavit alleges.

The payments to a company owned by DSA President Kevin Mickelson and to him personally were for the remodel and upgrade of a $1.1 million El Dorado Hills home purchased by developer Bart Volen, one of three men who are the focus of an Internal Revenue Service probe into a purported overbilling and laundering of the take.

Mickelson has not been accused of any wrongdoing and is said in the affidavit to have rejected an overture by Volen to phony up invoices so the casino owners would pay for the remodel.

But Mickelson disputes as incorrect portions of a 189-page affidavit of an IRS agent filed in U.S. District Court late Tuesday.

Those claims by Mickelson further complicate a complex series of accusations involving Volen and two employees of the United Auburn Indian Community, which owns the Lincoln casino.

No criminal charges have been filed, and lawyers for two of the men say the claims in two civil complaints are essentially fantasy. The U.S. attorney's office, which will not comment, filed

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/23/4359978/gfdgfd-gfd-hghgf-hgfhg.html