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C’mon, Gary. You need to get out more.
by Les
The latest scandal involving the government’s biggest public policy failure in the last fifty years shows how money laundering and loan sharking operates in casinos. The Asian gambling director (an example of what we at SPG describe as racial-profiling casino-style) at an Emeryville, California casino that was raided by law enforcement officials has been charged in federal court with ” structuring monetary transactions to avoid detection.” The rest of us who don’t work at casino public relations firms call it money laundering.
This casino employee, whose day job was to make Asian men and women lose as much money as possible, had nearly $3 million deposited in his personal bank accounts from 2006 to 2010, and of 380 deposits, only five were greater than $10,000, according to the complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Federal prosecutors said the Asian gambling director structured more than $906,000 in transactions at three banks in Los Angeles and the East Bay so that each transaction totaled less than $10,000 a day at any given bank location. By depositing large amounts of money in this fashion, he avoided federal reporting requirements.
The arrest was part of an investigation into a “criminal organization involved in drug trafficking and extortionate lending” at the Oaks Card Club and Artichoke Joe’s, a casino in San Bruno, Internal Revenue Service Special Agent Bryan Wong wrote in an affidavit. In addition, loan sharks at the casinos threatened to harm borrowers who failed to repay loans with 10 percent interest per week.
Some of the other individuals arrested in connection with the Asian gambling director dealt methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy. A man described as a onetime leader of the operation was arrested and charged last week in federal court with bank fraud for allegedly lying on mortgage-loan applications, court records show. The man, who has convictions for attempted extortion and weapons possession, is an associate of gang members in San Francisco’s Chinatown, according to the FBI.
This news strongly counters a Las Vegas Sun article last November in which Harrah’s Gary Loveman took great offense at the argument commercial gambling is inherently nefarious and criminal. “Hollywood has perpetuated those stereotypes with movies like “Casino,” Loveman said. “I’ve worked in this job 13 years and I’ve never lived a day like ‘Casino.’”
C’mon, Gary. You need to get out more.
Pictured: Harrah’s Gary Loveman. Hey, isn’t that our quote over your head?
Surprised?
The sad thing is I am not at all surprised by this story. We all assume these things go on in casinos – but what are we going to do to stop it?
Only one way to stop it
The only way to stop these practices is to get government out of the gambling business.The false argument pushed by predatory gambling interests is let government regulate it. But if government truly regulated it the way it needs to be regulated, the casino business model would fail.
Asian loansharks
This is a growing problem here in CA with our large Asian populations. They busted a major Chinese loansharking ring that operated at Thunder Valley and Red Hawk, 2 Indian casinos near Sacramento. This ring had ties to major organized crime figures in China. The card room gang was very clever, and of course, speaking a foreign language would keep most of the management at both places out of the loop!