In the first 10 days of legal sports betting in Kansas, people made nearly $40 million in wagers.
Although this may seem like a boon to the public purse, it is not.
“After payment of player prizes and deductions for promotional play and federal excise tax, net sports betting revenue for the first 10 days was $233,351, of which the state’s share is 23 $335,” Kansas Lottery Executive Director Stephen Durrell told state lawmakers last week. .
The Lottery expects the prize to grow as promotional free games and credits dry up and cash takes their place.
Cash was once the only method of sports betting in most of the United States. Before sports betting with big-screen TVs and phone apps that connected directly to a bank, bettors needed a “wise man”.
“Overall, in the majority of major cities, especially from east to Kansas City, the crowd controlled sports reservations,” says Gary Jenkins, a former mob investigator with the Kansas City Police Department. which now produces the Gangland Wire podcast.
Jenkins says sports betting was the mafia’s cash cow or line of credit. The local Civella family, for example, used profits from illegal sports betting to finance drug trafficking. And if a person was unable to pay his gambling debts, the mob lent him money at a high rate of interest.
And, says Jenkins, they would use the money to buy off politicians or cops when needed.
“A politician does not want a check. He didn’t want a credit card. He wants cash,” says Jenkins.
Now, the charm of making a little money for the Chiefs at a bar or barbershop is largely a thing of the past.
This does not mean that illegal gambling no longer exists.
In June, the Missouri State Highway Patrol discovered what they described as casino-style slot machines at a gas station in southwestern Missouri, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This prompted Missouri Lottery Director May Scheve-Rearson to say the illegal gambling industry has become brazen in the way it flouts state anti-gambling laws.
And just two weeks ago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, said it had charged a Luchese crime family soldier and five others accused of using offshore servers to run an illegal gambling operation.
That said, illegal gambling in Kansas City isn’t what it used to be.
“That means we don’t necessarily do sting operations targeting illegal gambling. More or less, we work on complaints when someone can call,” says Sgt. Brad Dumit, Chief of the Vice Unit of the Kansas City Police Department. “For example, there may be illegal slot machines at a gas station or convenience store.”
Fifty or 60 years ago, says Dumit, the vices unit did a lot of the illegal gambling business, busting bookmakers and illegal dice and poker games. Now his unit must police everything from human trafficking to unlicensed businesses.
“These are very time-consuming investigations, and with the changing times now where more of it has become legal, it’s not really high on the prosecutor’s list either,” Dumit says. “So putting the time and effort into it isn’t necessarily something high on our priority list.”
In the same way that Las Vegas has gone from a city of mobs to a corporate metropolis, illegal betting in Kansas and much of America has also gone from bar to betting app.
