Las Vegas’ Poker Palace is Fined $250,000
May 25, 2009
A leading casino in Las Vegas has hit with a fine of $250,000 by the Nevada Gaming Commission this week.
The casino was alleged to have allowed illegal bookmakers to lay off bets at their race book, meaning that they were willingly allowing illegal activity to happen under their licence.
The complaint was based on five different complaints, all which were acts that were performed by the staff at Poker Palace, with a couple of the staff paying out bets that weren’t even placed in order to meet the demands of their illegal operation.
With the ruling been read, the owner Marvin Coleman was critised for the lack of supervision that was placed on the staff and the casino during its time of operation.
With the ruling been met with an agreement statement from the casino, admitting to all five complaints raised, the casino will be forced to pay $250,000 in fines due to their negligence over this matter.
The investiagtion was started back in 2006 when the audit board realised that the volume of betting at the Poker Palace was very high over their racing offerings.
The investigation managed to dig out the illegal actions by reviewing every bet and payout that was offered in the last few years.
The control board issued a statement about the actions that had been happening:
While the off-track pari-mutuel contest at issue appeared to be legitimate on its face, based on the makeup of the cash-prize pool and the manner in which the contest was conducted, the contest was in actuality a front for an unlawful rebate scheme in violation of Nevada law.
It has been revealed that the buy in for the competition based on a $2,500 buy in was irregular for Poker Place, with many of their contests been placed with buy ins between $2 - $5.
It should be said that the casino neither admitted to the allegations or denied them, instead deciding to pay the fine to speed up the investigation to a close.
The fine was made up of $150,000 in costs for the investigation as well as a $100,000 fine for the act that has been alleged.
The control board told the casino that is was a good job that they had such good lawyers on their side otherwise the fine would have been far more.
Comments
Got something to say?