Man gets eight to 20 years for scam

A man accused of swindling hundreds of people out of Pro Bowl travel packages was sentenced Wednesday to spend eight to 20 years in prison and was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to his victims.

Mitchell Chirchick, 40, who is serving time in federal prison for mail fraud in Minnesota, apologized in District Court but said he never meant to cause anyone pain.

His Nevada sentence will begin after he completes his sentence in the federal prison system.

"I will carry this guilt for a long, long time and I have no one to blame but myself," said Chirchick. "It was never my intention to hurt anyone."

Authorities said people across the county paid Chirchick and his company, CEI Sports Tours, between $500 and $1,500 for travel packages to the 2007 Pro Bowl in Honolulu. The packages, which included air fare, game tickets and hotel rooms, weren't delivered, authorities said.

In many cases, people showed up to McCarran International Airport the day before the Pro Bowl expecting to pick up their travel packages but walked away empty handed.

In March, Chirchick pleaded guilty to three counts of theft in connection with the Pro Bowl packages.

"Mitchell just lied to us deliberately, maliciously," said Jeffrey "Dawg" Manz, co-owner of Aces & Eights Bar and Grill on Decatur Boulevard near Alta Drive.

Manz said he initially thought the low price of the Pro Bowl tickets was "too good to be true" but was won over after Chirchick organized a successful trip before the Pro Bowl. Manz said he encouraged friends and bar customers to purchase the travel packages, too. He even bought several packages to raffle off to customers at the bar.

But it turned out to be a scam that stained his reputation, Manz said.

"Some of our customers didn't appreciate it very much," said Manz, a bartender for 20 years. "Our trust, our armor, was damaged."

Chirchick's lawyer, James Dean Leavitt, said Chirchick had money problems in part because he paid his employees too much and then "kept getting further and further behind." He said Chirchick contacted people before they went to McCarran to warn them the travel packages wouldn't be there.

Chirchick said he recently became a father and is hurt knowing that he won't see his daughter take her first steps.

Chirchick, who lived in North Las Vegas, was born in California and earned a degree in marketing from the University of California, Los Angeles.

In 2001 and 2002, Chirchick pleaded guilty to mail fraud in Minnesota and was granted supervised probation. In Las Vegas, he was sued over allegations that he bounced checks, court records show.

Darlene Candito said she and her family also fell victim to Chirchick's scam. Her family bought Pro Bowl packages from Chirchick, but before they could go her husband, Steven, died in a car accident in 2006.

She said that after the accident, Chirchick told her he wanted to start a memorial for her husband and trust fund for her kids. Candito's friends and family and Chirchick sold tickets to a hockey game and the proceeds were supposed to go to her and her kids. But he took the money for himself and didn't deliver the Pro Bowl packages either, she said.

"He took my husband and my tragedy and turned it into another profit scheme," she said.

Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.