Gamblor’s World

New DOJ Internet Gambling Indictments Announced

May 15, 2007, Amy Calistri, PokerNews.com

On May 11, 2007 the Department of Justice issued a press release, announcing the indictment of seven individuals and four companies, including the sports betting website BetUS, relating to their involvement with internet gambling. Most of the individuals and companies charged were allegedly involved with the processing of credit card and Western Union transactions between US residents and internet gambling websites. All of the transactions cited in the indictment involved online sports betting operations. The charges were filed in the District of Utah, where two of the companies are based. The case is being investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.

The DOJ’s thirty-four count indictment, released on May 10, 2007, claims that the defendants systematically misclassified credit card transactions to internet gambling sites in an effort to disguise the nature of the transactions to US banks. The indictment also depicts a process by which the companies used a company in the Philippines as a clearing house for Western Union transfers between US bettors and internet gambling sites. The companies allegedly profited by charging a fee for each transaction. The indictment detailed a one month period of financial transactions from bank accounts in Antigua to relevant bank accounts in Las Vegas. In the period between April 20, 2005 and May 16, 2005, ten transactions totally over $5 million were recorded.

The companies cited in the indictment are CurrenC, LTD, also known as CurrenC Worldwide LTD; Gateway Technologies, LLC; Hill Financial Services, and BetUS. The individuals, all Las Vegas residents, named in the indictments are Baron Lombardo, Richard Carson-Selman, Henry G. Bankey, Francisco Lombardo, Count C. Lombardo, Tina I. Hill, and Kimberlie Lombardo. The Lombardos are related by birth and/or marriage.

The defendants, who have not been taken into custody, are charged with RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) conspiracy, bank fraud, violations of the wire-wager act, and money laundering. The potential maximum penalties for the counts in the indictment include 20 years for racketeering conspiracy; 30 years for bank fraud; two years for transmission of wagers/wagering information; and 20 years for money laundering. In addition to the criminal charges, the indictment also contains a forfeiture provision seeking forfeiture of $150 million as well as real estate, vehicles, and funds in numerous bank accounts.

BetOnSports was also mentioned by name in the indictment, but not charged as part of this investigation. BetOnSports had already been indicted by the Department of Justice on twenty-two counts last year and reached a settlement with the government back in October, 2006. Four other online sports books were also mentioned in the indictment but their identity was concealed. It is not known whether these online gambling websites, “A, B, C, and D,” will be indicted in further action by the Department of Justice.

© 2003-2007 PokerNews.com All rights reserved.

Gambling fuelled by government greed

Editorial - Tuesday, May 15, 2007 @ 16:00, Sarnia Observer

Sir: Re: The April 27, 2007, story in The Observer, “Canadians lost $14.5 billion gambling in 2006,” without getting anything in return.

Here are some other published facts re gambling in Canada. In 1992, $2.7 billion was lost in gambling in Canada. In 2002, $11.3 billion was lost. In 2004, the Canada Safety Council called addictive gambling “a public health crisis,” saying it accounts for up to 360 suicides a year in Canada. The council called for no further casinos being built, an end to 24-hour casino operations, limits on gambling-related advertising and limits on how much a gambler can lose before being cut off.

It’s estimated that 35 per cent of Ontario’s over $5 billion in gambling revenue came from “problem gamblers,” yet in 2005, Ontario announced it would spend only $4 million in two years on a problem gambler public awareness campaign. (Ontario spends over $250 million a year advertising gambling through the Ontario Lottery Corporation.)

In January 2005, the Ontario government announced Ontario won’t build any more casinos. This decision was at least 10 years too late as there were already over 35 venues in Ontario with slot machines. In December 2004, the chief coroner for Ontario considered launching an inquest into gambling-related suicides, however this never happened.

In 2001, Nova Scotia introduced a system to track gambling-related suicides and found 6.3 per cent of suicides were related to problem gambling. If Ontario’s rate is similar to Nova Scotia’s, Ontario averages 65 gambling-related suicides a year. (No wonder there was no inquest.)

Of course, there’s also the other consequences of gambling addictions domestic problems, financial problems, depression, desperation.

The government’s decision to legalize gambling, build too many gambling venues, over-advertise gambling, underfund public awareness programs and underestimate the growing social problems of gambling were driven by greed.

Governments must recognize that this is a growing problem and take proactive measures to warn all all ages of the numerous problems created with gambling addiction. Mandatory information meetings every year in all high schools would be a good start.

W.C. Harris

Bright’s Grove

Last Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 | 1:35 PM AT, CBC News

A woman whose addiction to VLTs cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars and her freedom hopes her story will be a cautionary tale for gamblers.

Margaret Alice Baldwin, 62, a former military nurse currently serving a five-year sentence for robbing a bank, told CBC News her problem started innocently enough in 1994 when she put a loonie in a video lottery terminal in a northern New Brunswick bar.

At the beginning, gambling gave Baldwin a high. And not even a bartender’s snide comment could dampen her spirits the day she won $300.

“‘I don’t know why you are so excited, you lost over $3,000 before you won that $300,’” she recalls being told.

As Baldwin’s addiction spiralled out of control, she lost friends and was unable to pay her bills, despite a substantial pension cheque from the military.

“I had a $500 watch on me and I would sell it for $25,” she said. “I would take it just to keep playing the machines.”

Fearing there was no way out, Baldwin held up a fast-food restaurant in 1999 with a toy gun she stole from a department store, hoping to be shot and killed by police.

She received counselling in prison but succumbed to the sparkle of the VLTs soon after her release. Numerous suicide attempts followed.

In September 2006, Baldwin robbed the Scotiabank in Amherst. She told the teller she had a bomb and demanded $100,000.

Throughout the entire incident one thought kept playing over and over in her head: “You’re going to be shot very shortly and this will be over,” she recalls.

Baldwin barely made it out the door when the police nabbed her, again without firing a shot.

Baldwin says she doesn’t want sympathy, she simply hopes her story can help others realize how deadly a video gambling addiction can be.

Copyright © CBC 2007

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http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21745205-5006301,00.html

CRAIG BILDSTIEN
May 17, 2007 02:15am
Adelaide Advertiser

GAMING venues will lose their loyalty programs and be forced to pull down most of their signs under tough new reforms to be unveiled today.

The Independent Gambling Authority will announce sweeping changes to gaming codes of practice, with most to be implemented by Christmas.

It also will recommend the State Government slashes trading hours by a third and bans Keno sales at supermarkets, pharmacies, newsagents and other non-licensed premises.

In a 120-page report to be released today, the authority recommends hotels and clubs only be allowed to open gaming rooms from 10am to midnight on weekdays and until 2am on weekends.

The proposed restrictions are more severe than those sought by Adelaide’s Heads of Christian Churches Gambling Taskforce, which asked for a ban on poker machines being played before 9am. Gaming venues can open for up to 18 hours a day.

Hotels earned $687.4 million and clubs $63.5 million from poker machines last financial year.

The authority intends to:

BAN loyalty programs offering discounted or free meals and drinks, household appliances and other gifts. “It is clear that inducements to gambling cause some people to make poor decisions about when and where to gamble, and for how long,” its report says.

SCREEN gaming venues so that “sights and sounds” are not visible or audible outside the room.

IMPOSE strict new limitations on signage, both inside and outside the venue.

INSIST on mandatory new warning messages in all gaming advertisements.

RELOCATE automatic coin dispensers so they are directly supervised by gaming staff. “A concern which has been raised about machines is that they enable a problem gambler to avoid human contact for an extended period of time,” the report says.

REQUIRE venues to develop formal alliances with gambling counselling services.

DEMAND venues develop new systems to identify and report potential problem gamblers.

PROHIBIT venues from linking alcohol sales to gaming rooms.

The report will also ask the Government to prohibit the Lotteries Commission from using under 18-year-olds to sell lottery products.

While it expresses concern about evidence given to its 16-month inquiry that gamblers had been served alcohol while intoxicated, the IGA stops short of recommending a mandatory road safety standard, such as .05, be introduced in gaming venues.

The authority’s reforms can only be disallowed by Parliament.

In an unusual decision, the authority has chosen to offer some exemptions to venues which sign up to new early intervention programs Gaming Care and Club Safe initiated by the Australian Hotels Association and Clubs SA. The authority does not have the power to enforce shorter trading hours, ban Keno from non-licensed premises or restrict lottery product sales from adults only, but has urged Gaming Minister Paul Caica to introduce legislation.

It rejected the need for longer gaming hours to accommodate shift workers.

“The authority does not accept that there is a special case to be made for the gambling entertainment option to be made available to shift workers whose recreation time notionally started at or after midnight,” the report says.

However, it reveals that the decision was not unanimous, but was the recommendation of “a substantial majority” of the seven-member board.

The authority has criticised compliance with current codes of practice, saying the industry has “not universally and whole-heartedly” embraced the spirit of the rules.

“There were examples of unacceptable conduct of licensed premises presented in the course of hearings for this inquiry,” it says.

The report says the number of problem gamblers using poker machines in SA at any one time could be as high as “one in five”.

The authority, required to review codes of practice every two years, is also currently evaluating the impact of the Government’s 2004 amendments to gaming legislation, including the forced reduction of poker machine numbers.

Randy Burton, The StarPhoenix, Thursday, May 17, 2007

It’s no surprise that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) should demand all of the money rolling into the casinos it operates throughout the province.

After all, Lawrence Joseph began his tenure as FSIN chief last November by threatening to scrap his organization’s gaming agreement with the provincial government altogether. Making demands for all of the revenue can only be good politics for him.

What is surprising is that the province would refuse to spell out its guiding principles in talks aimed at negotiating a new five-year gambling agreement.

It refuses to say anything about what it is prepared to offer the FSIN until after it has signed off on a new deal. In other words, the government will tell the public what’s happening with public money only after the decisions have been made.

It would be useful for folks to know what the stakes are in advance.

While the FSIN ignores this fact, Native-run casinos in Saskatchewan were established as a partnership between First Nations and the government.

Back in 1995, the province agreed to end a standoff over gaming jurisdiction by allowing the FSIN to build four casinos — at White Bear, Yorkton, Prince Albert and North Battleford. Two more are in the works now on the Whitecap reserve and in Swift Current.

The government gave the FSIN an effective monopoly over casinos outside of Regina and Moose Jaw and later extended it to the Saskatoon market. In exchange, the government retained jurisdiction over gambling and took 37.5 per cent of the profits.

That’s some $15 million a year the FSIN would like to keep. So when it talks about getting the government out of its casino operations, the implicit message is that things would go on just as they are now, except the government would get no money out of it.

As sweet as this would be for the FSIN, it’s a remote prospect. Whether the FSIN cares to consider it or not, such a fundamental change to the gaming agreement would have far-reaching implications.

If the province were to lose its share of revenue from First Nations casinos, then the idea of a partnership would die. It follows that if there is no further partnership, the question of a monopoly would also have to be revisited.

It simply makes no sense to give one group the exclusive right to run casinos and exclude every other interested operator, unless the province as a whole reaps some benefit from the arrangement. That benefit evaporates as soon as the province loses its share of gaming revenue.

So if the present agreement with the FSIN is to be torn up, there is no reason for government to prevent others, such as charitable groups, from establishing their own casinos. This would represent more of a mixed approach to gaming, a model used by the government of Alberta and others.

Obviously, this would mean competition for the First Nations casinos in the communities in which they already operate. Some would no doubt survive. Others might not.

This is the very scenario the provincial government sought to avoid when it first struck a deal with the FSIN back in the early 1990s. With no limits, there could be a casino on every reserve, and in every city and some small towns, too, for that matter.

If you follow this line of thinking very far, you soon realize it is in the FSIN’s best interests to maintain the present partnership.

Protected from competition, the First Nations have an opportunity to make a lot of money. In an open market, it could be a very different story.

If the province is to make any concessions in the current round of negotiations, the question becomes what it is to get in exchange. For example, even 12 years after the beginning of the Saskatchewan casino experiment, there is still inadequate accountability for how reserves spend their share of gaming revenues.

There is no way for an individual band member on a Saskatchewan reserve to find out how a chief and council spend the money they are given by the First Nations Trust, which collects 37.5 per cent of casino revenues. That money is intended to benefit reserve residents. It’s not too much to ask that it be accounted for in detail.

The NDP government has never been able to deliver that, and the Opposition Saskatchewan Party does not care to discuss it, which suggests it would do nothing about it in government either. Only Liberal Leader David Karwacki is willing to take a stand on the issue.

These issues are important, given that existing provincial gaming policy is to help the FSIN achieve full jurisdiction over gaming. That would require amendments to the federal Criminal Code which, of course, is beyond the province’s power to deliver.

If that means relinquishing all control over First Nations gaming, the public deserves to know what that’s going to mean before it happens.

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007

J Gambl Stud. 2007 Apr 24; Links

Examining DSM-IV Criteria for Pathological Gambling: Psychometric Properties and Evidence from Cognitive Biases.

· Lakey CE,

· Goodie AS,

· Lance CE,

· Stinchfield R,

· Winters KC.

Department of Psychology, University of Georgia , Athens , GA , 30602-3013 , USA , celakey@uga. edu.

We examined the DSM-IV criteria for pathological gambling as assessed with the DSM-IV-based Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity (DIGS; Winters, Specker, & Stinchfield, 2002). We first analyzed the psychometric properties of the DIGS, and then assessed the extent to which performance on two judgment and decision-making tasks, the Georgia Gambling Task (Goodie, 2003) and the Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), related to higher reports of gambling pathology. In a sample of frequent gamblers, we found strong psychometric support for the DSM-IV conception of pathological gambling as measured by the DIGS, predictive relationships between DIGS scores and all cognitive performance measures, and significant differences in performance measures between individuals with and without pathological gambling. Analyses using suggested revisions to the pathological gambling threshold (Stinchfield, 2003) revealed that individuals meeting four of the DSM-IV criteria aligned significantly more with pathological gamblers than with non-pathological gamblers, supporting the suggested change in the cutoff score from five to four symptoms. Discussion focuses on the validity of the DSM-IV criteria as assessed by the DIGS and the role of cognitive biases in pathological gambling.

Don’t make same mistake as PEI

Telegraph-Journal, May 17. 2007

I have just read the comments by Ross Galbraith about problem gambling measures and self-exclusion practices at the Charlottetown racino. Contrary to Mr. Galbraith’s remarks, these measures are a complete sham, and are specifically designed to fail.

Counsellors in Charlottetown have been instructed not to intervene in situations where people are obviously spending far too much money. They will only do so if that person approaches them first. Good luck with that!

As for self-exclusion, I just updated the P.E.I. chapter in my book on VLTs in Atlantic Canada to include an incident involving an intellectually challenged individual.

This person had lost thousands of dollars, most of it stolen from his place of work, while playing the 200 VLTs at the racino. When his legal guardian found out about this, he called the racino to have him banned from the premises.

But they refused to do so, saying that the individual in question would have to come in and ask to be banned. Eventually, after the story hit the front pages of newspapers on P.E.I, the racino people relented. Did they not know full well that this person should not be sitting for long hours in front of those machines? But no such intervention by counsellors ever took place.

So not only are responsible gaming strategies a cruel hoax, the racino itself in Charlottetown is costing taxpayers more than $5 million annually (in losses and purse pools subsidy). Why would the people of New Brunswick want to make the same mistake as Islanders?

PETER MCKENNA

Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown.

Linda Nguyen, Vancouver Sun, Friday, May 18, 2007

VANCOUVER - The family of a missing 40-year-old East Vancouver woman is pleading for the public’s help to find her.

Editha Mangaoang, mother of four teenagers, told her husband late on May 8 at their home in the 1200-block of East 60th that she was going to Richmond’s River Rock Casino with a friend.

Her family has not heard from her since and police say they have reviewed the casino’s surveillance tapes that night and have no record of her showing up.

continued ….

Parents of abandoned baby arrested

By AP, Edmonton Sun, Fri, May 18, 2007

TOKYO — A young Japanese couple suspected of leaving their baby in the baggage hold of a motorbike while they gambled was arrested yesterday after the child’s body was found in a gutter, police said.

The arrest of Motoki Tamiya and his wife, Mika, both 21, comes amid public outcry about the treatment of children after a separate case in which a preschooler was abandoned by his father at an anonymous drop box meant for unwanted infants.

“We could say that we are witnessing the deterioration of Japanese society,” ruling party legislator Tsuneo Suzuki told parliament, referring to recent cases of child abandonment.

“We must stem this appalling destruction of family and community morals,” he said.

In yesterday’s case, the one-year-old boy is believed to have suffocated while shut in the motorbike’s storage compartment as his parents gambled, reports said.

After discovering the baby was dead, the couple is suspected of dumping the body off a remote road in the mountains of western Japan earlier this year, police said.

continued at http://www.responsiblegambling.org/staffsearch/latest_news_articles_details.cfm?intID=10146

Author: Scott, Neil
Source: Regina Leader Post
Published Date: May 05, 2007

Description:
Casino Regina and Casino Moose Jaw just keep chug, chug, chugging along and the profits and customers keep pouring in along the way. Regina hasn’t yet become Las Vegas North and for that matter Moose Jaw hasn’t quite become Saskatchewan’s equivalent to Reno. But the two casinos have produced impressive numbers over the years which suggest they have been big successes. About 16 million customers, equal to almost half the population of Canada, have visited either Casino Regina or Casino Moose Jaw over the years, said Marty Klyne, the president and chief executive officer of the Saskatchewan Gaming Corp.