Indictees in a Denver sports betting case have told how they only accepted bets from clients they trusted. The indictments identified 23 bettors that were on the books of the operation that lasted as long as four decades. None of the bettors are to be charged for placing wagers in a case where limits were set as high as $50,000 per week. Daniel Dinner, 70, and Michael Elick, 38, led the sports betting “enterprise” and the former saw $1.2million in cash seized from his two homes during raids back in March.
It’s alleged that Dinner ran the operation for around four decades before it was turned over to Elick in 2009 for $100,000 – according the documents used in court. The defendants are charged with professional gambling, possession of a gambling device or record, transmission or receipt of gambling information and money laundering. Both are in violation of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. One man told the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s Organized Crime and Gaming Unit that Dinner only took bets from “trusted sponsors” and those he made sure weren’t gambling addicts.
Pam Russell, spokeswoman for First Judicial District Attorney Scott Storey, said, “We focused our resources at those alleged to be at the top of the criminal enterprise, the bookmakers, the people who made profit from the betting.”
You only have to cast your mind back to this time last year. The NFL embarked on its annual decampment to the UK as the Broncos played at the San Francisco 49ers temporary home surround of Wembley Stadium. Anyone that took the long trip over the Atlantic fancying a flutter on the game would have seen a very different attitude to that of the US. A situation where sports betting didn’t take place in the back rooms of dingy pubs and was allowed to take place. The practice being widely embraced has never led to problems that many sports betting opponents in the USA cite.
It’s back up the fact the USA won’t see countrywide sports betting legalization during our lifetime. New Jersey may be on the way to seeing the light when it comes to the practice. This is in one of the traditional hotspots for the gambling industry in North America and it just means that Atlantic City is finally getting with the times to stand alongside it’s more intelligent older brother, Las Vegas.
