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EMBEZZLER MUST REPAY $100,000

THE BALTIMORE SUN

A Glen Burnie woman has been ordered to repay more than $100,000 sheembezzled from a bingo parlor operated by a businessman with ties toreputed organized crime figures.

Lillian Elizabeth Perina, 37, had worked as a bookkeeper at Bingo World Inc. until August 1989, when her employers discovered she had been altering the Brooklyn Park bingo parlor's bank deposit slips. Perina, who has been jailed on theft and bad check charges since last July, received a suspended sentence Friday in county Circuit Court.

Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. ordered the woman to pay $102,597.98 in restitution, including more than $100,000 to Bingo World. The operators of Bingo World had accused Perina of embezzling about $180,000,said Robert Bittman, an assistant state's attorney.

Perina's attorney, Jerome R. Sereboff, said that figure was too high, but he admitted his client does not know exactly how much she stole.

Perina pleaded guilty two months ago to felony and misdemeanor theft and to writing bad checks. Under the plea agreement, she was to receive a five-year sentence, with all but three years suspended.

But Sereboff asked a judge to give his client credit for time served and suspend the balance of her sentence, saying Perina had undergone surgery for breast cancer and for a ruptured disc in her back.

Thieme sentenced the woman to five years, but suspended the sentence and ordered her immediate release.

In 1989, the county denied Bingo World its license renewal after allegations that Stephen B. Paskind, who had the license since 1986, associated with organized crime figures at a bingo hall he owns in Florida.

In October 1990, a federal grand jury indicted six reputed mobsters on charges that they laundered money from gambling, loan sharking and interstate theft operations in New York, Chicago and Florida through Bingo World, supplying Paskind with more than $1 million.

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