Dennis Sammut knew he was about to die. A deadly pancreatic cancer was eating at the 76-year-old’s gut, and it was time to prepare the family business for his death.
This was no small task. Sammut, the no-nonsense grandson of Maltese immigrants, was the third-generation owner of Artichoke Joe’s Casino, a 103-year-old San Bruno institution he grew into one of the Bay Area city’s largest employers — and biggest cash cows.
In 2019, the card room paid the city almost $2 million in taxes: enough to fund San Bruno’s library, streets and public works budgets. The Sammuts, a beloved local family, had donated some $3.7 million to the community over the previous decade.
That December, Sammut, who died a month later, walked into a meeting that could come to define his legacy.
The question of the day was his financial compensation. The company, in his mind, owed him a significant bonus after a legal saga had forced him to take a pay cut two years before. Never mind that he was on his deathbed.
It should have been a meeting to settle his affairs. Instead, he set in motion a bitter legal battle that is still tearing the Sammuts apart.
The hundreds of public documents generated by the civil war offer a rare glimpse into one of San Bruno’s most influential businesses as the Sammuts fight over millions of dollars. They also expose an ugly side of a family that has long been a fixture of the community.
At the heart of the sprawling dispute is the fortune. At stake is control of the casino itself.
‘A selfless philanthropist’
Dennis Sammut was a man of clout; the business he ran is nearly as old as the city of San Bruno itself.
His grandfather founded the enterprise in 1916, and over the next century, the Sammuts converted the pool house in a horse stable into a full-fledged card parlor that employs some 400 full-time workers. In 2021, Artichoke Joe’s had the eighth-largest gross revenue of any California gambling operation.
All that money bought influence.
In 1996, when plans for the not-yet-built BART airport extension threatened to impinge on Artichoke Joe’s parking lot, Sammut enlisted a crack team of Washington lobbyists to kill the project’s federal funding. He nearly succeeded.
In 2010, when a natural gas pipeline exploded and killed eight people in San Bruno, Sammut rushed to provide aid.
He regularly donated thousands to local schools, the San Bruno Professional Firefighters Association and AARP and served for 12 years on the city’s economic development committee.
But a little over a decade ago, Artichoke Joe’s started running into serious legal trouble.
In 2011, state gambling regulators temporarily suspended the card room’s operating license, accusing the company of failing to alert authorities about suspicious transactions and allowing criminal loan sharks to prey on patrons.
The company agreed to pay $825,000 in fines, retrain staff to spot loan-sharking and comply with regulations targeting money laundering. But six years later, federal regulators found that Artichoke Joe’s had not properly implemented those measures and levied an $8 million fine.
Artichoke Joe’s ultimately paid $5 million as part of a settlement. It later paid the state $5.3 million in a separate settlement for allegedly misleading regulators and violating money laundering laws.
These were the largest fines state and federal regulators had ever imposed on a California gambling operation.
Still, after Sammut died in January 2020, the mayor of San Bruno spoke at a ceremony to celebrate his charitable work. The San Mateo Daily Journal dedicated a 740-word obituary to him. Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives posthumously thanked Sammut for his service.
“It wasn’t about getting a plaque or acknowledgment,” Mayor Rico Medina said of Sammut. “It was about making a difference.”
Allegations of ‘self-dealing’
It did not take long for the family to fall apart.
In 2022, Sammut’s sister Sally Johnson sued his widow and son. Johnson accused her sister-in-law, Annie Sammut, and nephew, Cody Sammut, of excessively and illegally compensating themselves after the death. The complaint also names the card room as a defendant.
Johnson alleged that before her brother died, he “committed numerous acts of self-dealing” and compensated himself lavishly, all while mismanaging the card room.
Annie and Cody have denied wrongdoing. Both continue to sit on the company’s board, and Cody was named CEO after his father’s death. Johnson told The Standard that her two relatives voted her off the board about a month ago.
Lawyers for Artichoke Joe’s, Annie and Cody did not respond to requests for comment. In court documents, attorneys for Artichoke Joe’s noted that Johnson “was gifted a minority interest and made a director but never worked at the business.”
“What I’m doing is for the integrity of the Sammuts,” Johnson said in an interview. “We never had any money growing up. Our father worked hard, our grandfather worked hard.”
Her lawsuit has carved an irreconcilable rift in the family. At its core, it is a battle over the Sammut fortune.
Johnson alleges that between 2011 and 2016, Dennis Sammut quadrupled his annual bonus to $3 million. That was a quarter of the card room’s revenue in 2016 and nearly triple its net income, according to Johnson.
But the crux of the suit is the December 2019 board meeting just before Dennis’ death.
In Johnson’s telling, her brother insisted that because he had taken smaller bonuses as a result of the massive fines imposed on the company, the board should award him a deferred package to make up for it.
Artichoke Joe’s has said in court documents that Dennis’ mother, who was 99 at the time, had an estate plan that required the company to repurchase her shares if one of her children died before her.
Because that appeared likely, the company said, Dennis chose to defer his 2019 bonus so the card room would have enough cash on hand.
“Dennis managed Artichoke Joe’s as a dictatorship,” Johnson’s complaint reads. “He alone made the decisions and expected others in the company and in the family to fall in line.”
Johnson alleges that her brother lied to her, saying the bonus was needed because he had loaned the company money. Regardless, Johnson voted with the rest of the board to approve the bonus in principle, though the family did not specify how much it would be or when it would be paid out.
Dennis died a month later, and it took two years for the family to revisit the matter. When it did, things did not go well.
In December 2021, Cody and Annie proposed a massive $16.15 million compensation package for the late owner, citing the board’s 2019 agreement. Johnson was irate.
As Dennis’ wife and son, Annie and Cody would gain directly from the bonus, Johnson wrote in the lawsuit. They should not have been able to vote on the compensation package, she said.
The two initiated the first $3.23 million payment installment anyway.
In an interview, Johnson said the dispute over the compensation package has nothing to do with her own fortune.
“The money’s not going to go to me,” Johnson said. “It’s going to go back into Artichoke Joe’s. That money should go to our people, our employees.”
Attorneys for Annie and Cody have pointed out that Johnson approved the bonus in principle in 2019 and argued that their clients were merely carrying out the binding directive when they approved the $16.15 million package.
Artichoke Joe’s has argued that because of her own “delay and lack of diligence,” Johnson has no standing.
“Plaintiff consented to the action of which she now complains,” the card room’s lawyers wrote.
More dirty laundry
Johnson’s lengthy lawsuit enumerates several other complaints against her sister-in-law and nephew. The two have denied any wrongdoing with respect to the claims.
One of the most salient allegations is that Annie loaned Artichoke Joe’s $2.5 million at an 8.5% interest rate, which Johnson characterized as exorbitant. The term was supposed to expire in early 2022.
Johnson alleges that, during the same meeting at which Annie and Cody voted to award the late Sammut a $16.15 million bonus, the two also voted to extend the term of Annie’s loans by three years.
“Artichoke Joe’s had ample cash available to repay Annie’s notes,” Johnson’s suit reads.
That allowed Annie to enrich herself at the expense of the card room, Johnson argued. She also took issue with a $600,000 bonus that Cody proposed and approved for himself with the help of his mother in 2022, calling it “excessive.”
Johnson also claims that Cody and Annie have failed to produce the card room’s annual financial reports for the last five years and have “taken steps to prevent” her from viewing balance sheets and income and cash flow statements.
The legal battle is unlikely to end soon.
In April 2023, the family entered court-ordered private mediation. It was unsuccessful.
Johnson indicated that she thinks further mediation would be unproductive and is asking for a jury trial. Among her demands, she wants the court to forever banish Cody and Annie from the company’s board.
“We need professionals on that board,” Johnson said. “People who’ve been trained to run a company.”
Annie, Cody and representatives of the card room object to a jury trial and have expressed a willingness to reenter mediation. They won’t reconvene until September.
Johnson said she hopes the court will rule in favor of what she sees as necessary to save Artichoke Joe’s. But, she said, there may be no saving the Sammuts.
“It has ruined the family,” she said. “It’s really sad.”