After I was hired at Thunderclap Casino (not its real name), I had to wait for the Gaming Commission to perform a background check before they would issue me a gaming license. It’s easy to imagine Salgado presiding over his tribe the way an outspoken sheriff might run a small rural town in a hardboiled crime novel.Įven by today’s standards of commonplace corruption and governors gone wild, it’s a stunning fall from grace but I can’t say I’m surprised. His penchant for wearing tinted eyeglasses indoors makes him look more like a comic book gangster than a tribal politician. He wears flashy suits, slicked-back hair and weighs in excess of three hundred pounds.

A former football player, Salgado is a rough-looking and even tougher-talking customer who enjoys throwing his considerable weight around. In the insular world of Indian gaming, Salgado is something of a throwback. If convicted, Salgado could be sentenced up to 363 years in prison. His crime? Pocketing a quarter of a million dollars in kickbacks from contractors who sought to do business with the tribe. On October 23, Robert Salgado, Chairman of the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians in Riverside County, California, was indicted on 36 counts, including bribery, conspiracy, and filing false tax returns.

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