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.