Newly-released state affidavit details suspended Sheriff’s role in illegal gambling operation
During these talks with the informants, Deokaran told them he was a “Special Deputy” with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, even showing a Special Deputy ID card.
Just over three months after his arrest, the News-Gazette was one of several local media outlets Friday night that received a copy of the 255-page arrest affidavit detailing the racketeering case against suspended Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez and his co-conspirators.
The document, finally released by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney’s Office, sheds light on the investigation, including the allegations against Lopez and other defendants and their roles in an illegal gambling enterprise based in Osceola and Lake counties that generated over $21 million in illegal proceeds from 2019 through August 2024.
The document goes into great detail how Lopez, who’s been charged with two felony counts of conspiracy to commit racketeering and one count of racketeering, came into contact and business with Krishna “Kris” Deokaran, an operator of five illegal gambling houses, including one on West U.S. Highway 192 in Osceola County.
Lopez has pled not guilty to the charges. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)’s Orlando office began investigating Deokaran, who had opened an auto body and collision center and had money transferred to its accounts, for money laundering in January 2024.
A multi-agency investigation, including FDLE and HSI, learned of the presence of the criminal organization, and that it had locations in Lake and Osceola counties, including the then-Eclipse Social Club on West U.S. Highway 192, not far from Medieval Times. Evidence in the affidavit shows Lopez was involved in operations at the Lake County businesses, not just the Osceola one, and in bringing in investors.
While Deokaran was at the top of the enterprise, overseeing its finances and logistics, and conspirators like Ying “Kate” Zhang, Sharon Fedrick, Sheldon Wetherholt and Carol Cote had their roles, Lopez, according to the document, allegedly provided protection for the gambling operations in exchange for payments.
“(Lopez) played a multifaceted role in the expansion and protection of the enterprise,” the document says. “Lopez initially joined the operation in exchange for political campaign contributions and personal payments … Lopez pledged to use his anticipated positions as the elected Osceola County Sheriff to shield the enterprise from law enforcement scrutiny … Following his election as Osceola County Sheriff in 2021, Lopez continued to advance the interests of the criminal organization, and he collected a portion of the illegal gambling proceeds from Eclipse Social Club in cash, further solidifying his role as both a protector and beneficiary of the illicit operation.”
The investigators from HSI and FDLE were named in the affidavit; a confidential informant whose identity is redacted is also referenced.
How It Went Down
Undercover Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) agents went to the Eclipse club posing as patrons on July 13 and Oct. 14, 2023, and found about 50 illegal gambling-type machines. Two confidential informants met with Deokaran, who through the investigation was found to own and operate the Eclipse and five other clubs in Lake County, in December 2023 and January 2024 regarding laundering $1.5 million.
During these talks with the informants, Deokaran told them he was a “Special Deputy” with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, even showing a Special Deputy ID card. He also told them he had access to a patrol car.
MBI and Florida Gaming Control Commission executed a search warrant at Eclipse on Aug. 27, 2024, when the gambling machines housed inside were seized. HSI and Lake County deputies also executed warrants at two of the Lake County locations and Deokaran’s Orlando home that day.
The affidavit states that In a Sept. 5, 2024 interview, Fedrick said Deokaran had donated money to Lopez’s election campaign, told her “They did not have to worry about law enforcement at Eclipse,” and that Eclipse Social Club employees were “protected by Sheriff Lopez.” She described Lopez as “Krishna’s buddy,” and that she was comfortable operating Eclipse because Lopez “helped Kris (Krishna) get the building.”
Months prior to that meeting, Federick said Lopez warned Deokaran “To be careful because of a task force investigating gambling establishments.” But when the Eclipse club was raided in August, Deokaran came to resent Lopez for not warning him and getting his bank accounts frozen.
Wetherholt was interviewed Sept. 12, 2024, and said he thought Eclipse Social Club was proposed to be a hookah lounge, but Deokaran was opening a casino and that “He was friends with the Sheriff in the county.”
In his Oct. 3, interview, Deokaran stated he owned and opened Eclipse “with a partner, Marcos R. Lopez,” but like the other locations, ownership was in Wetherholt’s name. They had met in 2019 after being introduced at the Leesburg location by Deokaran’s security guard Daniel Pagan – at the time an Osceola County Sheriff’s deputy. Deokaran gave Pagan a $1,000 check to make a documented donation for Lopez. He and Lopez exchanged phone numbers and became friends. More cash donations followed after Lopez won the 2020 Democratic primary; Lopez reportedly warned Deokaran “Not to tell anyone or let anyone see him accepting cash … as the friendship evolved, they talked about going into business together.” Deokaran also said Lopez told him “He was going to be the ‘most powerful man’ in Osceola County.”
“In exchange for his partnership, Deokaran stated Lopez said he could provide law enforcement protection … Deokaran understood Lopez expected to receive money from Krishna for that protection.”
After he won the 2020 Sheriff’s election, the two exchanged messages about finding an Osceola location for a club, landing at the West 192 site, which Deokaran opened in June 2022 after working out a lease with its owner Gurvinder Dhillon. Shortly after, he started making regular $15,000 to $35,000 payments to Lopez, delivered either in a meeting at a restaurant or at one of Lopez’s homes.
It's later revealed in the document that the location was the former Red Star Hookah Bar, where a deadly shooting occurred in October 2021 that took the life of 23-year-old Kissimmee resident Danilee Hernandez, an innocent bystander. Two months later, the Sheriff’s Office announced it had made seven arrests connected to the incident.
At the October 2024 interview, Doekaran said he had paid Lopez between $600,000 and $700,000, and paid him for the final time “at a rodeo in July 2024.” At later meeting between Deokaran and HSI agents, Deokaran said Lopez knew the money was proceeds of the gambling business.
The meetings weren’t all about money. Lopez promised he would help them obtain other business locations in Osceola County. According to the affidavit, “Lopez introduced the idea of opening a second location. Lopez stated he wanted his girlfriend to go into partnership with them in this second location … Deokaran stated (Lopez) wanted his unnamed Venezuelan girlfriend to manage the new business. Deokaran said he had also given Lopez money when his girlfriend was present.”
The two spoke on Aug. 27, 2024, when the search warrant was conducted on Deokaran’s clubs; he asked Lopez what was going on. “Deokaran stated (Lopez) claimed he knew nothing about it.” It was the last time Lopez contacted him.
During the interview, Deokaran was shown a photo of a Sheriff’s deputy recovered from his phone; he said Lopez “instructed him to contact him anytime a deputy showed up at the Eclipse … he believed Lopez would then contact that deputy and tell them to ‘back off.’”
In January 2025, an Orange County Sheriff’s investigator working undercover with MBI said that in 2022 he did a business check at the Eclipse and found, “It was basically an electronic casino” and had no occupational license. A security guard there called “the owner” who told him he “knew the Sheriff,” and if the club was shut down it’d be right back open. After conducting research on the Eclipse, “He stated, ‘I found it very suspicious that we got a business operating in Osceola County with that basically has no paper trail on it.”
Ying Zhang was interviewed in February and stated they met in 2019 as Lopez sought campaign contributions; he introduced her to Deokaran to become an investor in his clubs, and she gave him a $1,000 campaign contribution (the largest allowable) and said she “gifted” him another $20,000 because she “considered (Lopez) a friend.”
Text messages between the three in August and September 2019 show them meeting and making plans to go into business together. Over the course of the next year, investigators have evidence Zhang imported gaming machines from China to be used in Deokaran’s e-casinos.
On Sept. 9, 2019, the document shows Lopez sent Zhang a message stating: “Kate nothing to worry. No matter what the outcome is when I win we start the first internet amusement café in Osceola County. You will be safe and not have to worry about anything because I will be your sheriff.”
Zhang and Deokaran remain the only co-conspirators not to have been arrested. Zhang reportedly fled the country after the interrogations this year, and the only case against Deokaran is a civil suit in Lake County regarding one of his holdings that was dismissed.
