I'm going to stop blogging for a while and go over to the cafe.
"Bill would ban cybercafes’ online slots; House speaker says Internet parlors are not playing fair" July 16, 2011|By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, while he seeks to legalize slot machines at the state’s horse tracks, is trying to cut off a burgeoning black market of Internet slot parlors.
Yeah, the LOOTERS of the LEGISLATURE HATE COMPETITION and MONEY they CAN'T GET THEIR HANDS INTO!
DeLeo said yesterday that he is filing legislation to ban so-called cybercafes, storefront operations where gamblers play online slots and other games. Gamblers win points in the games that can be redeemed for cash at the cybercafe.
Several of the venues, which resemble traditional Internet cafes, have cropped up in Springfield, Fall River, New Bedford, and other cities in recent months.
DeLeo’s bill would prohibit the establishments by making it a crime to conduct or promote a sweepstakes with an electronic machine. Offenders would be fined up to $250,000 per machine or could spend up to 15 years in state prison.
“Owners of these establishments are taking advantage of their patrons and scamming them out of money,’’ DeLeo said in a statement. “This is unacceptable, and I look forward to seeing this legislation passed into law.’’
What do you think a CASINO and LOTTERY ARE?
Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has spent several months trying to stop the cafes from proliferating, praised DeLeo’s efforts.
“These cybercafes are really cyber scams with no posted odds, minimum odds, or guarantee of payouts for patrons,’’ she said in a statement. “This bill makes certain that companies cannot skirt our laws.’’
As opposed to the casino scam.
The legislation exempts the state lottery, as well as betting on horse races, bingo, and charitable gambling events.
Un-flipping-real!
While DeLeo is attempting to ban the cybercafes, he is also working behind the scenes with Senate President Therese Murray and Governor Deval Patrick on legislation to legalize casino gambling in Massachusetts....
Why did the word HYPOCRITE just come to mind?
The Legislature plans to debate gambling bills in September, after Labor Day.
Massachusetts debate usually means vote for it or else leadership will punish you.
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"State cracking down on cybercafe gambling; Businesses are legal, owners say" July 22, 2011|By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
WORCESTER - Authorities, who have begun cracking down on these so-called cybercafes, calling them little more than thinly veiled gambling operations that exploit patrons and run the risk of laundering money.
The State Police have raided three cybercafes this year and are conducting criminal investigations into their owners, one of whom is a longtime Fall River city councilor, Leo O. Pelletier, a retired jailhouse chef and 27-year veteran of the Fall River City Council whose cybercafes in Fall River and Fairhaven were raided by the State Police and shut down.
The police don't have better things to do, huh?
Yeah, I guess too many banks are laundering government's drug-dealing loot.
The cafes - which have proliferated in Florida, Virginia, and other states - began cropping up in Massachusetts about two years ago. At least a dozen have opened in the state, often in strip malls in blue-collar communities. Since the raids in March, several have closed down on their own. At least four are still operating.
Attorney General Martha Coakley says they violate the state’s existing ban on gambling, and issued regulations in June, saying she needed to make that prohibition explicit.
Last week, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, the state’s foremost proponent of expanded gambling, introduced legislation that would subject anyone running a cybercafe to a fine of $250,000 per computer terminal or a prison term of 15 years.
“This kind of activity, gambling, is not allowed under Massachusetts law,’’ Coakley said Wednesday. “They are totally unregulated, there’s no oversight, and there is no protection for the consumer.’’
The cafes sell patrons Internet time on cards, which they can swipe to gain access to the Web. Most, however, use the cards to play casino-style games with names such as “Trick or Treat’’ and “Irish Luck.’’ Patrons win points on the cards and then redeem them for cash, up to $5,000, according to one cafe owner.
The owners insist that the businesses are legal, but they are under mounting pressure from law enforcement officials in this and other states. Many say their days in business may be numbered....
Gee, government can sure be effective when it wants.
Called “convenience casinos’’ by critics, the cafes have taken advantage of demand for casino-like action close to home. They found a niche in Massachusetts, as the Legislature failed several times to legalize full-scale casinos in recent years.
“Once that is addressed, I imagine these cybercafes will dry up,’’ said Timothy J. Rooke, a Springfield city councilor who has been trying to license one in his city. “But up unto the point where they do take some action, they’re going to be popping up.’’
Earlier this year, another type of questionably legal gambling took hold when several poker rooms opened across the state. They tried to operate under a law that allows charities to hold casino nights up to three times a year. But they shut down in April, after Coakley said they were pushing legal boundaries.
See: Boston Globe Back Room
What do you mean state closed it down?
DeLeo said he is concerned that cybercafes may threaten his attempts to attract full-scale casinos and slot parlors to the state’s race tracks, two of which are in his district. The Legislature plans to debate casino legislation in September.
Yeah, the SELF-SERVING SHIT is ONLY CONCERNED about HIMSELF!
I hope he follows in the steps of his predecessors.
Related: Casino bill to be debated in September
“If we’re asking people to invest millions of dollars [on casinos],’’ DeLeo said, “and you’ve got 10 or 20 of these rogue gambling places out there, they’re going to say, ‘Why are we going to invest that much money if they’re going to be taking money away from us?’ ’’
From WHO?
The State Police raided Pelletier’s cafes and another cybercafe, Cafeno’s in Chicopee, in March. The troopers seized hard drives from Pelletier’s computers and his business records and froze bank accounts worth about $109,000. But no charges have been filed....
Did you just catch a whiff of fascism?
The longest-serving councilor in Fall River history and often the top vote-getter in city elections, Pelletier was charged in 1983 with operating illegal poker machines in the restaurant he was running, the Rockland Diner. He said he resolved that case by paying a fine and completing a year of unsupervised probation.
He said he is not worried about the possibility of being charged again. Chatting about his cafes during a tour of Fall River this week, he enthusiastically greeted workmen on the street and stopped into a bar for a shot of Canadian Club whiskey and a beer chaser.
“We ran a good, clean place,’’ he said. “We didn’t rip anybody off.’’
Unlike the state.
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"Most legislators do not have racetracks in or near their districts and exhibit little interest in the regular debates over simulcasting, but the tracks are central to the larger, ongoing debate over expanded gambling....
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Maybe I'll just play me a ticket:
"A game with a windfall for a knowing few; High-rolling gamblers are exploiting a quirk in Cash WinFall, raking in huge profits every 3 months as the Lottery looks on" by Andrea Estes and Scott Allen, Globe Staff / July 31, 2011
SUNDERLAND - Billy’s Beer and Wine sold exactly $47 worth of lottery tickets the day before Marjorie Selbee arrived, just another sleepy day for the liquor store in this tiny Western Massachusetts town. But from the moment the 70-something woman from Michigan entered the store early July 12, Billy’s wasn’t sleepy anymore.
Just down the road, and I've been by there many times.
Over the next three days, Selbee bought $307,000 worth of $2 tickets for a relatively obscure game called Cash WinFall, tying up the machine that spits out the pink tickets for hours at a time. Down the road at Jerry’s Place, a coffee shop in South Deerfield, Selbee’s husband, Gerald, was also spending $307,000 on Cash WinFall. Together, the couple bought more than 300,000 tickets for a game whose biggest prize - about $2 million - has been claimed exactly once in the game’s seven-year history.
I know just where it is, dear readers.
But the Selbees, who run a gambling company called GS Investment Strategies, know a secret about the Massachusetts State Lottery: For a few days about every three months, Cash WinFall may be the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country. Because of a quirk in the rules, when the jackpot reaches roughly $2 million and no one wins, payoffs for smaller prizes swell dramatically, which statisticians say practically assures a profit to anyone who buys at least $100,000 worth of tickets.
The state is lucky if I buy one.
During these brief periods - “rolldown weeks’’ in gambling parlance - a tiny group of savvy bettors, among them highly trained computer scientists from MIT and Northeastern University, virtually take over the game....
Sounds like the BANKS of WALL STREET!!
“Cash WinFall isn’t being played as a game of chance. Some smart people have figured out how to get rich while everyone else funds their winnings,’’ said Mohan Srivastava, an MIT-educated statistician who gained fame in gambling circles when he found a flaw in a Canadian scratch ticket game that allowed him to pick the winners more than 90 percent of the time.
Yup, it's a STATE GOVERNMENT operation.
It is hard to say precisely how much each gambler has won because they have a year to claim prizes and the lottery does not track winning tickets of less than $600. But the Selbees have already claimed nearly $1 million in prize money this year, entirely in tickets valued at $802 to $24,821. Their final haul will undoubtedly be considerably larger.
Srivastava calculated that a gambler who bought 200,000 Cash WinFall tickets during four rolldown weeks in a year would win enough to cover the $1.6 million investment and earn a profit of $240,000 to $1.4 million - without ever winning the jackpot. Srivistava’s calculations suggest that the top five groups and individuals playing Cash WinFall collectively win back the cost of their tickets plus $1 million to $6 million in profits each year from about 12 days of gambling.
If only I had the cash reserves like a bank.
On the other 350-plus days of the year, less-sophisticated Cash WinFall players generally lose money, their losses building up the multimillion dollar pool that is ultimately paid out during the rolldowns.
But THAT is OKAY because SUCKERS like them are responsible for the GOBS of STATE AID you get!
The high-stakes players’ dominance of Cash WinFall is putting an uncomfortable spotlight on the state lottery, which has known about the phenomenon for years but only recently started to police the game under new state Treasurer Steven Grossman.
Meaning Cahill the Corrupt was asleep at the switch.
Cash WinFall is so lucrative to stores that sell the tickets - which get a commission equal to 5 percent of the sales - that some are tempted to break the rules to accommodate the high rollers’ needs.
Behaving just like Wall Street!
A Globe reporter saw Marjorie Selbee behind the counter at Billy’s, apparently operating the Cash WinFall machine in violation of a lottery rule that store employees alone can work the ticket dispenser.
I'm so glad those crack Globe reporters are out investigating things, aren't you?
Within days, the lottery suspended ticket-selling privileges at Billy’s, Jerry’s, and five other stores after agency inspectors discovered violations, such as printing out Cash WinFall tickets for bettors who were not there.
So the GLOBE REPORTER is a SNITCH, huh?
However, lottery officials stressed that stores did not tamper with the machines that generate the tickets or otherwise aid the gamblers.
“It is very important to note that their actions in no way compromised the operation or integrity of the game,’’ said lottery officials in a statement.
Pfffft!
More broadly, some question why the state would sponsor a game that is vulnerable to betting tactics that funnel most of the prize money to just a few....
That is the way the RUN FISCAL POLICY for EVERYTHING!
But lottery officials say the game is successful, generating a respectable $11.8 million in profits in 2011 even though the agency sometimes pays out more money than it takes in during the rolldown weeks. Lottery officials say they more than offset the cost of rolldown weeks over the rest of the year.
That is why they DON'T CARE about the FIX!
“It’s a niche game for a different audience,’’ explained Paul Sternburg, the lottery’s executive director. “You want to bring in as many players as possible. Some people chase a huge jackpot. Others are looking at odds.’’
You mean, like a CYBERCAFE?
One thing is certain, however: The players who invest big money in Cash WinFall do not want to talk about it, refusing to discuss the game or explain the secret of their success. Mark Fettig of Tennessee, one of the top 10 winners during the May rolldown week, urged the Globe not to write a story at all, saying “it would be immoral’’ to attract more people to Cash WinFall and potentially dilute the winnings of current players....
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I NEVER SAW a WORD of CONCERN about GAMBLING ADDICTS and the DESTROYED FAMILIES and COMMUNITIES!
That is ALSO A SURE THING to be found WHEREVER is a CASINO!
Also see: Saturday Night Drawing
No need for me to check if I won.
