This is why you don’t ask for free legal advice.
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Ask a stupid question…
Fuller not guilty
Baltimore Ravens cornerback Corey Fuller did not, according to jurors, run a gambling house, even though prosecutors said he presided over games “like a pit boss.” Did the state fail to make its case, or are juries unwilling to convict people for the “victimless” crime of running a private casino?
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Casino operator gets death sentence
It’s illegal casinos, to be sure, but that headline is still pretty scary. The moral: don’t break the law in China.
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Illegal in the 808
I’m always fascinated by illegal gambling busts, and today’s news does not disappoint. Three illegal casinos in Hawaii have been discovered and closed.
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Not a nuisance!
For the past two days, most of the cable news networks have been playing up President Bush’s retorts to Senator Kerry’s remarks about terrorism. Here is the original quote from CNN:
”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” the article states as the Massachusetts senator’s reply.”As a former law enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
Kerry was a prosecutor before he got into politics, and made fighting organized crime a priority.
Bush campaign Chairman Marc Racicot, in an appearance on CNN’s “Late Edition,” interpreted Kerry’s remarks as saying “that the war on terrorism is like a nuisance. He equated it to prostitution and gambling, a nuisance activity. You know, quite frankly, I just don’t think he has the right view of the world. It’s a pre-9/11 view of the world.”
Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” used similar language.
“Terrorism is not a law enforcement matter, as John Kerry repeatedly says. Terrorist activities are not like gambling. Terrorist activities are not like prostitution. And this demonstrates a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset that will not make our country safer. And that is what we see relative to winning the war on terror and relative to Iraq.”
I saw Bush’s speech this morning where he said that terrorism was “not a nuisance, like gambling and prostitution.” It felt great to have the President of the United States refer to the topic of my intellectual interest as a “nuisance.” I can only imagine what Frank Fahrenkopf’s going through at the American Gaming Association.
In all fairness, Kerry did call illegal gambling a nuisance, but that nuance has been lost on most of the news people.
In all honesty, I’m surprised that the AGA hasn’t issued any kind of statement objecting to either Kerry’s remarks or the Bush camp’s spin.
Since I’ve been called the leading expert on American gaming history, I’m sure people are just dying to know what I thnk. Here is my official stance on the issue: Illegal gambling is not a nuisance: for most of US history, it was a persistent illegal market that flourishes because of the gap between public law and personal morality. Today, it is, in most states, a pernicious threat to the revenues of state-sponsored gaming businesses.
If only Kerry’s people had vetted that blurb with a gaming historian, they might have saved themselves a lot of trouble.
Another point: one of the justifications for federal anti-Internet gaming activity is that Internet gaming can be used to launder money and support international terrorism–at least that’s what the Justice Department says. So we come full circle here. Is unsanctioned gambling just a “nuisance,” or is it a serious threat to homeland security?
Police poker popped
Like many other Americans, police in Virginia Beach like playing poker. For almost a year, they’ve been holding a monthly Texas Hold’em tournament in the Fraternal Order of Police lodge. But now, because the tournaments are apparently illegal, they will cease. From HamptonRoads.com:
The game became an issue with the FOP after the state Department of Charitable Gaming determined that the tournament was illegal and reported the matter to city prosecutors.The gaming commission said the tournament must be shut down, or the FOP would risk losing its license to hold charity bingo and raffle events, said Paul A. Farrell, the police officer who organized the event.
Farrell said the FOP allowed him to use its lodge for the event and provided a lunch buffet for participants.
He said the ruling was a shock to him because he had been assured that the game was legal as long as he did not take a �cut� of the proceeds.
Farrell said all proceeds � generated by a $75 fee charged to each participant � were turned over to the winners of the tournament.
�I thought I was doing everything on the up and up,� he said. �I definitely paid out everything that I took in.�
Cristman said state statutes outlaw all gambling in Virginia, with four exemptions: bingo and raffles held by charitable organizations; the state lottery; off-track parimutuel betting; and games held in private homes.
The FOP game, Cristman said, does not qualify under any of the exemptions.
Poker itself is not outlawed by state statute, he said, but playing it for money anywhere but at a private residence is illegal.
So you can play poker all you want in a private home, but if you do so in a fraternal hall, you’re breaking the law. This makes perfect sense, and is another example of the fractured approach to gaming prohibition that I discuss in Uneasy Convictions.
The thing that struck me was that the whole set-up seemed like something from the movie Rounders. A police-sponsored tournament drawing people from all over (about 150 showed up to the final two games), everyone thinking they’re experts after watching televised poker. Probably the perfect set-up for a skilled professional to make a killing.
When even the police aren’t sure if their gambling is legal, you know that there needs to be some clarification.
New thing at Newport
I think that was the name of an Archie Shepp album in the 1960s. Anyway, today I’m talking about Newport, Kentucky. Once a major stop on the national “flourishing illegal casinos and vice” circuit, the city has cleaned up its image.
The city became a vice center in the 19th century, and remained so until an anti-corruption campaign in 1961. I think I touched on this in Uneasy Convictions, because Newport was one of the top targets of Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department. You can read all about it in Ronald Goldfarb’s Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, if you are curious.
Anyway, the Cincinatti Post has a few stories about Newport today. They are: Before there was Vegas, there was Newport
This is part of a series to publicize a symposium entitled “Girls, Guns and Gambling: How Ordinary Citizens Drove Vice out of Newport,” to be held at Northern Kentucky University Thursday.
This should be a fascinating evening. If I was in the Cincinatti area, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
Inside an illegal gambling operation
If you were from the Maple Park, IL area, DJ’s Tavern West was the place to get some gambling done…until a May 28th bust, that is. From the Daily Herald:
Court documents that detail the search of the tavern at 221 Main St. in Maple Park and the Yorkville home of its owner, David Weeks, paint a picture of a little Las Vegas in the cornfields.Illinois State Police officers went undercover for a 15-month investigation of the tavern, which came to a head May 28 with the arrest of 12 people including Weeks, the bar manager, and the Maple Park village president. The Maple Park police chief was arrested about a week later.
The investigation found a complex gambling system mixed with a small-town openness, the records show.
According to court documents and officials, here is a look at how authorities say the operation worked:
Nearly three-quarters of the front room of the tavern was taken up by nine video slot machines all hooked up to pay out illegally, Melvin said. Just like in Las Vegas, patrons put cash into the machines and played until they ran out of money or decided to cash in credits.Undercover officers said in the report winning players would tell whatever bartender was on duty how many credits they had earned and the bartender verified it by pushing a button next to the cash register, officials said.
Then money changed hands, something undercover officers said they witnessed more than 30 times.
The knob next to the cash register was wired to the video slot machines to allow resetting of the machines’ credits, the report said. Illinois State Police officer Joseph Stavola wrote in a court affidavit that the wiring was for “no purpose other than illegal gambling.”
According to court documents, police found much more to whet gamblers’ appetites.
Bartenders offered two rolls of five dice for $1. Winning rolls were based on poker categories such as a full house or four of a kind. Winners could earn free drink tokens, a six-pack of beer or for five of a kind, the cash pot, which could get as high as $500.
On Wednesdays, a vertical spinning wheel came out of the back office to offer $2 for one of the 120 lines on the wheel, according to court records. Patrons not present for the spin forfeited half of their winnings to help prime the pot for the following week’s spin.
The wheel, which was also used for local raffles, was so large that when officers raided the bar they had to disassemble it to make it fit through the front door.
Other gambling options changed by the season. In the fall, a football square pool offered a one in 100 chance for between $2 to $10 a square, court documents said. During the summer, a weekly race car pool offered a randomly selected NASCAR starting position and a percentage of the pot for those whose car finished first, second or third place.
Despite the plethora of games, there was one key reason officials focused on the Maple Park bar.
“Book making,” Melvin said. “That’s why we paid more attention.”The Illinois Attorney General’s office estimates the video slot machines generated $700,000 a year in profits.
Officials won’t disclose how much the book making generated, but in a weekend raid on one of the duller professional sports betting times, officers seized $8,300 from the bar and $40,522 from the Yorkville home of the bar’s owner, according to court documents. Stavola wrote in court filings that a frequent patron at the bar told him Weeks netted $65,000 from the Super Bowl betting alone.
Court documents describe a complex system set up to take and pay out bets on professional sporting events. Patrons could cash checks at the bar, provided the money was going toward gambling. Bets and payouts for sporting events were kept separate from cash flow generated by other games. A cash register at the south and north end of the bar made the division possible.
Bets were primarily taken at the tavern by bar manager Michael Faber and sometimes through his cell phone, according to the documents. When he wasn’t around, bartenders would collect envelopes of money for him or pass out envelopes left by him to winning patrons. Undercover officers allege they repeatedly saw such envelope transactions and contacted Faber on his cell more than 18 times to place bets that totaled more than $2,000.
As a historian, stuff like this is invaluable in reconstructing the history of illegal gambling, which I think is just as important as legal gambling in understanding how Americans approach gambling.
They didn’t, unfortunately, take action on the mystery mammal.
