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Tribal leader who led fight for casinos said it was intended to be short-term solution

This story from the Washington Post serves as an obituary for Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who led the fight for tribal casinos. However, he never intended them to last. “It’s not our end goal,” Mr. Milanovich told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “We know gaming won’t last. The laws will change at some point. But it’s a means to an end. It has brought us sorely needed revenue which has allowed us to diversify even more, so the future of the tribe is secure.” Thirty years after IGRA, most tribes are still promoting predatory gambling as aggressively as ever.

Key tribal leader who led effort for casinos conceeded their inevitable failure

All play and no work leads to millions for one Native American tribe

Investigative Journalism, Native American Casinos, Regional Casinos

Every day, millions of Americans get out of bed, get ready, and go to work, spending their whole day working to provide their family with necessary income. The American economy is built on hard work on the part of individuals. However, members of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Native American tribe live a very different lifestyle. “We have 99.2 percent unemployment,” Stanley R. Crooks, the tribe’s president, said as he smiled during a rare interview. “It’s entirely voluntary.” Members of this tribe receive just over $1 million annually from the tribe’s casino profits, without ever having to work to provide a good or service. Their economy is built on the profits of gamblers, and little more. There is no economy in the entire world that functions like this- where no one has to produce anything of value to reap millions. That is because it is an unsustainable economic plan, as can be seen in this article from The New York Times which documents the group’s fear of recent attempts to restrict casino gambling, which would leave the tribe with essentially no source of income.

2012 One Million Each Year for All as Long as Tribe Luck Holds

Casinos in Atlantic City have failed the African-American community

Investigative Journalism, Lowering the Standard of Living for Ordinary Citizens, Regional Casinos

This article from The Grio outlines why the casino industry in Atlantic City have proved a detriment, not an aid, to the African-American community in the city. For years, the city government has served the needs of the casinos in a desperate attempt to save their falling revenues, ignoring the city’s many African-American workers, and leaving them behind. Casinos came to the city because they were the supposed savior of the city’s financial problems, however the African-American community can attest that in its wake, the casino industry has decimated the city, leaving it on the financial respirator, and on its last limb.

2014 How Atlantic City’s promise failed its black community

Investigation finds worldwide game-fixing in soccer

Corruption, Investigative Journalism, Sports Betting

This Los Angeles Times story details the results of an investigation that found worldwide and widespread corruption in soccer. Europol, the joint police body of the European Union, has released information form its ongoing investigation of the possibility of major worldwide soccer games being fixed, and it has found evidence of over 680 “suspicious games” in 5 continents, including a Champions League match in England and several World Cup qualifying matches. According to one German investigator, this widespread corruption is “on a scale and in a way that threatens the very fabric of the game.”

2013 Investigation uncovers possible fixing of soccer games worldwide

Release of online gambling data shows that gambling to get rich is a bad bet

Fraud, Investigative Journalism, Online Gambling, Predatory Business Practices, Regional Casinos, Sports Betting

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, a major European online gambling company, released data on 4222 gamblers, and the math behind gambling win probabilities shows just how badly the odds are stacked against gamblers. Experts say these data figures are comparable to those of real casino here in the US, however casinos keep their data a heavily-guarded secret. The figures released show that statistically, the more you play, the more you’ll lose- the heaviest gamblers had only a 5.4% chance of ending in the black, compared with 17% of the customers who placed the least amount of wagers. Furthermore, the data shows that casinos and gambling operations rely mostly on problem gamblers for their revenue- 2.8% of the customers provided half of the company’s profits, and 10.7% provided 80% of revenue. This The Wall Street Journal article summarizes the findings.

2013 How Often Do Gamblers Really Win- New data provide some answers

Internet sweepstakes cafes designed to addict

Investigative Journalism, Other Forms of Gambling, Public Health

Nearly two-thirds of gambling addicts at Maryhaven, an addiction-treatment center in Columbus, Ohio, point to Internet cafe gambling as the root of their problem. Internet cafes, officially banned but up for referendum vote in November, allow players to buy time on machines that feel like real poker or slot machines. The problem that many problem gamblers find is that they are often so much closer than a real casino, thus making them more tempting. Unlike casinos, which have to give a portion of profits back to the community by law, these machines benefit only the operator. Internet cafes have all the same addictive qualities as a casino, but are much more convenient and easy to access, which is why this Columbus Dispatch editorial calls for their permanent ban from the state of Ohio.

2013 Hooked by design

State officials crack down on Internet cafe gambling

Investigative Journalism, Other Forms of Gambling

Internet cafes are becoming increasingly popular, with more and more opening up in malls and gas stations. However, there is more than just web-surfing available at these cafes- many are home to illegal gambling in the form of computers that are made to look, sound, and feel like slot machines. Players buy time on these machines and use them until their time is up. The problem, state officials say, is that states do not collect tax revenue on winnings from these machines, which is why many states are beginning to more aggressively target these cafes, called “Internet sweepstakes cafes”. Unfortunately for states, as this USA Today story explains, these cafes are harder to shut down than they thought.

2014 States battle illegal gambling at Internet cafes

Lottery winning streak raises questions

Fraud, Investigative Journalism, Lotteries

The statistics behind winning the Lottery- be it a scratch ticket or a multi-million dollar jackpot- show that it is next to impossible for one person to win more than a handful of times. That’s why Lottery officials are scratching their heads at certain players who have turned in hundreds of winning scratch tickets yearly. Statistically, these people would have to be spending millions and millions of dollars to win this many times, but they aren’t. This has led many to believe that these lucky winners are actually middlemen- used by actual winners to help evade taxes taken out by the Lottery. This Boston Globe article explains how some players seem to have luck that never runs out.

2014 Some winning streaks have defied belief

Embezzlement is on the rise as problem gambling grows

Crime, Investigative Journalism, Public Health, Regional Casinos, Slot Machines

As this article by the Observer-Reporter explains, many white-collar workers with access to tens of thousands of dollars of company funds embezzle this money to fund their gambling addictions. It’s a growing problem in Pennsylvania, and shows how problem gambling drives some to break the law to fuel their addiction.

2014 Embezzlement a growing trend with problem gamblers

Poor citizens ride casino bus out of desperation to survive

Investigative Journalism, Lowering the Standard of Living for Ordinary Citizens, Predatory Business Practices, Regional Casinos

A bus ride to a casino in the New York/Pennsylvania area is often accompanied by a free-slot play promotion, worth around $15-$45 of free play in a surrounding casino. This is meant to draw bus riders into the casinos, however, for some citizens like these poor New Yorkers, this is a way of life. Many citizens, desperately looking to make ends meet, spend their days riding casino buses for hours to collect free-slots play and often reselling the coupon for cash.

2014 Sands Bethlehem casino bus-hoppers beat odds using free money