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Monday, September 05, 2011

Ind. Gov't. - "Indiana’s gambling enforcers stay busy: Special unit hunts bookies, animal fights, charity abuse"

That was the headline to this story yesterday in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reported by Niki Kelly. It begins:

INDIANAPOLIS – You might want to hedge your bets before you call your bookie or get cozy with a professional underground poker game.

Indiana is one of only a few states to have a special police unit scouring the state for illegal gambling, and they’ve been busy.

Overall, the gaming control division has investigated cases in several dozen counties and arrested more than 40 people on more than 80 gambling-related criminal charges since July 2009.

The cases include several animal-fighting rings, multiple sports-bookmaking operations, some charity gaming violations and more.

Allen County leads the state with 11 gambling-related arrests, including for promoting professional gambling and corrupt business influence.

“I’m very pleased,” said Ernest Yelton, executive director of the Indiana Gaming Commission. “We have been more active in enforcing the criminal gambling statutes than in the past.”

That’s because until 2007, that work was essentially left to local police struggling with limited resources. But lawmakers created the division that year to crack down on illegal gambling in exchange for adding thousands of slot machines at the state’s two horse racing tracks.

So at a time when state funding has been slashed – even for education – the gaming control division of the Indiana Gaming Commission spends about $1 million a year on 16 fully trained law enforcement officers assigned to attacking illegal gambling in all its forms. The money comes from charity gaming fees.

More from the long story:
Now the group of officers is breaking up high-stakes poker games; dogfighting rings and sports-betting operations.

For instance, in Allen County last year, a gaming commission investigation led to the arrest of five men for their roles in a longtime poker den. All five have since pleaded guilty and received suspended sentences or probation.

Yelton made clear that the division isn’t taking down personal poker games in someone’s garage or basement.

But when the person running the game – aka “the house” – starts taking a cut of every bet, it becomes illegal professional gambling.

Occasionally the gaming control division gets involved with entities that run charity gaming events. But only if the violations are an abuse of charity gaming law as opposed to innocent mistakes.

For instance, three people were arrested this year and charged in Kosciusko County for using a VFW Post in Warsaw to run a poker room.

One man, who was not a member of the post, was allegedly being paid by the VFW to run the operation, including bringing in dealers from Fort Wayne and “raking” 10 percent of each pot of money. These are violations of charity gaming rules.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 5, 2011 08:51 AM
Posted to Indiana Government