PECHANGA INDIAN RESERVATION -- In the course of three years, Dennis Blundell allegedly embezzled $256,000 from the city of Murrieta coffers and gambled it away.

A former Murrieta building and safety manager, and a well-respected man in the community, Blundell said this week that he won and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Pechanga Resort & Casino, southwest of Temecula, trying to feed an insatiable addiction.

"(Gambling addiction) is a problem much larger than anyone wants to look at," Blundell said, sitting in the office of his attorney, John Pozza. "The pitfalls are tremendous. It took me to the point where I was engaged in things I wouldn't normally have done."

Blundell was arrested in July for allegedly altering 34 checks made out to the city, which police say he put his own name on and deposited into his personal account. He subsequently resigned from his job and has been released from jail on $100,000 bail.

Problem gambling is an issue that gambling tribes in California say they are increasingly looking to address, but have taken only measured steps to prevent. Pechanga was the site of a daylong conference Friday on the subject of problem gambling.

"We're doing what is deemed current in the industry," said Mark Macarro, the chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, whose casino is one of the more successful in the state. "We have the (problem gamblers hotline) signs, we have the (employee) training and we have the self-exclusion (programs)."

Conference probes response

The conference is the last event in a weeklong effort to raise awareness of problem gambling put on by the California Nations Indian Gaming Association and the California Council on Problem Gambling.

Money collected from gambling tribes has recently funded the state's new Office of Problem and Pathological Gambling, but tribal leaders say they want to do more because gambling addiction is a problem on and off the reservation.

Gambling experts say that between 1 percent and 5 percent of the adult population in the country is either a problem gambler or pathological gambler.

"When you are one of the numbers, those statistics mean very little," Macarro told a crowd of casino officials and problem gambling advocates who attended the conference. "When you grow up on the reservation, what the outside world thinks of addiction, we see as a way of life."

Macarro said the experience of seeing various kinds of addictions on American Indian reservations is the reason why many of the tribes insisted that the gambling agreement with the state -- which sets forth the rules for gambling on American Indian casinos -- include a funding source for problem gambling programs.

Under terms of the agreement signed in 1999, a "special distribution fund" was created to provide money for several purposes, including gambling addiction programs.

State funding arrives

In August, the state Legislature approved $3 million in funding from the special distribution fund for the new office, which will provide education, referral services and other resources for people with gambling addictions.

Blundell, 41, said he hopes that his story will inspire greater awareness about a problem he lived with for many years. During that time, he would leave early from work to go gamble, he said. He would gamble for days at a time. And though he was earning $96,000 a year working for the city, he was constantly unable to pay his bills, he said.

"I had a favorite machine, I used to know it by number," he said.

Blundell, a divorced father of two children, said he once hit jackpots in all four video poker machines in the row where his favorite machine was, but instead of being pleased with the wins, he was upset because he could not continue to play while the machines paid out his money.

"There were times when I'd win $50,000 to $60,000, and then I would come back and eventually lose it. I didn't buy anything," he said. "It turned into a vicious circle."

Blundell said his arrest "hit me like a brick wall."

He added that he was never approached by casino employees asking if he had a gambling problem, even after gambling two to three days at a time. As long as he had money in the bank, he could withdraw funds from the automated teller machine, he said.

And he could cash checks at the casino cashier.

Though there are steps the casinos could take to prevent addicts from gambling, Blundell he said he does not fault the casinos for his problem.

"What I did was wrong, it was a mistake, and hopefully I can help somebody," he said. "I don't blame anybody."

Learn more:

For more information on gambling addiction, visit the California Council on

Problem Gambling Web site, at www.calproblemgambling.org, or call (800)

426-2537. The Council on Compulsive Gambling of California Web site is

www.gamblingaddiction.cc or call (760) 329-1581.

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-5426 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.