MONROE - Two men testified Friday, Jan. 27, in Green County Circuit Court that they placed bets in a gambling operation run by a 50-year-old Monroe man and used a local tavern as the pick-up and drop-off location for money won and owed.

Jason Kundert, Argyle, and Chad Pfund, Monroe, said they placed bets on college and professional football between 2005 and 2007 with Werner J. Rast, who was arrested Dec. 1 at his home on six Class I felony charges of commercial gambling following a long-term investigation by Monroe Police with the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ), Division of Criminal Investigation.

Assistant Attorney General Richard Dufour is prosecuting the case and called four witnesses, including Kundert and Pfund, before Judge James Beer during the preliminary hearing Friday afternoon.

Kundert said he placed bets totaling about $4,000 every week during football and some college basketball seasons via phone with Rast. He pooled betting money with friends, he said, and then periodically either mailed a cashier's check to Rast or stopped by Old Smokey's Bar, 1301 17th St., to exchange cash winnings or money owed in an envelope with any bartender on shift.

Pfund testified to similar behavior, although he said he bet only $20 to $50 of his own money in an average week. He said he picked up Rast's parlay cards - a sheet that lists the payouts players can receive based on total bets - at Old Smokey's Bar and shared them with friends. Like Kundert, he testified to betting money on behalf of others.

Players in the game paid 10 percent on bets they lost, Pfund said. So, he explained, a lost bet of $20 would cost the player $22.

Loreen Glaman, a DOJ agent who specializes in investigations of white-collar crime, gaming and Internet crimes against children, testified that she reviewed gambling bookmaking documents from CDs, floppy discs and a computer hard drive seized in November 2007 from Rast's residence.

A spreadsheet for a 10-week period in the fall of 2006 kept track of at least 30 to 40 gamblers in Rast's operation, Glaman said.

The investigation into Rast's case began Nov. 11, 2007, when police responded to a report of a domestic abuse incident at his home on the southwest side of Monroe.

According to the criminal complaint, Rast's then-wife told officers he became enraged after she asked him to watch football in a different room. With her consent, officers conducted a search of the home, and later, with a search warrant, they looked through his computer and phone records.

An arraignment in the case is scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday, Feb. 3.