Illegal Gambling Activities Still Happening
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010The anti-gambling activists who are standing against legalizing gaming believe that legalization of gambling online will inevitably bring in crime, corruption, money laundering and addictions. This has yet to be proven but they have a good argument. It only stands to reason that if you increase the pool of people allowed to gamble, there will be more incidents that are questionable rising. Plus when people see that gambling is legal and lucrative, they may try to hold their own illegal gambling activities. There have been incidents as of late to prove their case too. For example, Canada has Stewart Goldstein. Goldstein is being charged with fraud regarding the Bank of Montreal. He allegedly bilked the bank out of $600,000. Goldstein claims though that he was strong armed throughout the entire deal and is claiming an even bigger mafia-like ring is at fault. He was just a “pawn” the ring used and he is the easy target in the intricate and illegal dealings. Goldstein is accused of racking p a huge amount of debt during his affiliation with the mafia-organized gambling ring. In fact, it reached upwards of $1.5 million. He failed to address his debt or the interest involved with it and that is what caused his problems in the start. Since he could not pay the debt, he was left at the mercy of the illegal gambling operators and they called the slots allegedly on what he was forced to do illegally.
This is a sign of how things in the gambling world can go wrong. Anti gambling activists are having a field day with the information and the incidents in the world of gambling like this one that prove there is some concern regarding activities. The police force needed to watch over these activities could be substantial. This alone could mean an additional millions of dollars in expenses for states in the future. They could easily eat away at their funding from legalizing gambling and have to put millions into shoring up their police task forces. Of course this is only one incident, but it could be a sign of what legislators face as they continue to push and change rules regarding legalizing and regulating gambling.

