
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is no longer crisscrossing the united states on the campaign that is presidential, and thus the Republican, now in his 2nd gubernatorial term, has more time and energy to refocus his efforts on issues facing his or her own state.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said enough will do on Thursday, calling on state lawmakers to seize control of the city. He made his situation built with colorful graphs displaying the reckless overspending that’s become rampant in Atlantic City.
No concern is more paramount in New Jersey right now than Atlantic City’s current economic crisis. On Thursday, Christie told their fellow legislators that it’s in the city’s best interest to allow their state to take solid control of its funds.
‘Even with all the help and the advice associated with Emergency Manager that we applied in 2015, Atlantic City took only modest steps to rein within their costs,’ Christie said at the statehouse this week. ‘They face a $100 million spending plan shortfall this year, $100 million spending plan deficit in 2010 . . . These are the numbers, this will be the math, and these are the important points, and there’s no debate relating to this.’
Park Place & Boardwalk Salaries
In Christie’s arguments, the governor highlighted just what he believes to be gross overspending on municipal workers. Armed with charts and graphs, he showed that 119 city employees were paid over $100,000 throughout the last year that is fiscal an amount which doesn’t even include the ‘Lamborghini-level’ healthcare and benefits package that accompanies those salaries.
Christie also stressed the truth that Atlantic City paid $6.6 million in 2015 to retiring public employees, primarily to compensate unused sick and vacation days. Part-time council members were collectively paid $300,000, an expense regarded as extravagant in the optical eyes of the governor.
Unless the state legislature takes action to give control of the flailing gambling mecca to Trenton, Christie claims he lightning link pokie lacks the ability to renegotiate contracts with public sector unions to have the ‘exorbitant expenses of the city employees in check.’
Takeover may be the Only Solution
Christie is calling on State Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D) to urge the chamber to give control of Atlantic City to the state. Prieto opposes that path, opting in favor of the PILOT (payment in place of taxes) program rather.
PILOT would allow casinos to pay taxes for a fixed routine that isn’t determined on property value or gaming profits, which have both significantly diminished over the years, as tourism to the area has dropped.
Christie believes the PILOT system is a solution that is short-term won’t help Atlantic City’s long-term forecast. Financial analyst ensemble Moody’s seems to agree.
‘If only the PILOT bill passes [with no other measures instituted], the town continues to face distress since the single bill is insufficient to restore Atlantic City’s fiscal wellness,’ the credit rating corporation said recently. ‘ While the PILOT bill creates additional profits and avoids incurring casino that is additional liabilities, it is insufficient to avoid crippling deficits of $30 to $40 million a 12 months, throughout the next 5 years.’
Christie believes public workers require to step up to the plate within the most readily useful interest of the city, but it appears some are usually doing that.
Every four weeks instead of two, a change that would allow the government to continue operating until the next quarterly tax payments are received on May 1 after Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian (R) threatened a city closure of non-essential employees, various unions proposed paying employees.
But that is only one away, so action will need to be taken, and soon month.
DoubleDown Social Casino Illinois Customer Lawsuit Dismissed, Angry Patron Lost $1K in Virtual Chips
IGT’s DoubleDown multiplatform casino that is social has survived a course action lawsuit attempt from the disgruntled Illinois customer who reported that the free video gaming platform offers ‘nothing more than camouflaged illegal games of chance.’
IGT’s DoubleDown casino that is social back a class action lawsuit effort from the disgruntled Illinois online customer this week, who claimed that its operations had been tantamount to ‘real’ gambling. (Image: onlinewin.minnim.org)
Plaintiff Margo Phillips blew $1,000 in real money on digital, value-less potato chips regarding the site before determining she desired to claw back every play cent. Phillips claimed that because DoubleDown utilizes ‘gambling mechanics’ in its games, it’s tantamount to gambling that is actual.
Well, except for real money being involved, but apart from that.
In a course action lawsuit filed during the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Phillips said she wanted the DoubleDown web site to be shut down and money refunded to customers in Illinois. The lawsuit ended up being filed on behalf of all citizens of the state who had lost over $50 playing at DoubleDown, under the antiquated Illinois Loss Recovery Act (ILRA).
Claw-back Law Dragged Up
The 19th century legislation states that any Illinois gambler who loses $50 or more gets the right to sue the winner getting the money straight back. It also states which should the losing gambler perhaps not sue the winner within sixth months, then ‘any person’ is allowed to sue with respect to all losers, for up to 3 times the amount.
The law was originally built to protect destitute families who’d had their dollar that is last stolen loved ones, which was afterwards gambled away.
Phillips states she began playing on DoubleDown in January of 2013, and soon began purchasing digital (and value-less) chips with genuine money, once she had played through the initial supply of free chips. Because she paid for the chips, she argues, they had a monetary value, the same as chips purchased in a casino, and therefore the services offered by DoubleDown were tantamount to illegal gambling.
According to Phillips, also ILRA, DoubleDown ended up being in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business ways Act, and was guilty of unjustly enriching it self with the use of ‘gambling devices,’ another no-no under Illinois state legislation.
The filing could have had to establish that online social casino games can be understood to be ‘gambling devices,’ and that IGT had procured money from the plaintiff within an manner that is illegal.
Establish ‘Gambling’
But the judge, unlike Phillips, wasn’t buying any of it.
JudgeEdmond Chang noted that ILRA requires a success and a loser from the results of a gambling proposition. Because virtual chips bought from DoubleDown can not be cashed in for real cash, the social casino site cannot lose such a thing from the proposition, and therefore Phillips had been on shaky ground.
In fact, generally speaking, Phillips was asking the court to reconsider the definition that is very of as it’s construed in essentially every state in the US: namely, the proposition that something of value is risked upon the end result of a event or game that is at the mercy of possibility within the hope of receiving something else of equal or greater value.
While spending money on virtual chips comprises a stake that is financial without any financial reward involved, no type of gambling has occurred, by any legal definition, at the very least.
In fact, you could say that Phillip’s decision to sue DoubleDown is a greater exemplory case of gambling than anything that happens regarding the social casino site. And in this situation, it had been a bet that is losing.
Money Laundering and Suspicious Activity at Casinos Continues to go up, FinCEN Reports
Money laundering is serious business.
Unfortunately for anyone in the casino industry, criminals have long relished the attractiveness of the floor cage as being the instrument that is perfect clean dirty money into purportedly legitimate funds.
‘Washing’ money by trading it in for chips and then cashing it away again has become a preferred method of cash laundering by crooks. Now FinCEN wants the industry to better monitor itself for potential crimes being committed by patrons, and the issues have actually become international. (Image: i5design.com)
A bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, requires institutions to file Currency Transaction Reports when a customer transacts over $10,000 in a single day since 1996, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ( FinCEN. In addition, federal legislation mandates that a dubious task report (SAR) be completed if the patron is suspected of participating in the laundering of cash.
With thousands of commercial banks in the United States, including smaller institutions that are regional FinCEN is cracking straight down on money laundering by threatening non-conforming banks with financial penalties.
With no choice but to comply with FinCEN, SARs filed by banks rose from 288,343 in 2003 to 972,037 in 2013, a 70 percent increase in just 10 years. But, a unanticipated decline in SARs followed in 2014, and along with it came a rise in suspicious activity reports being filed by the casino, securities, and insurance coverage industries.
What does it all mean?
Underground and Out of Sight
This week titled, ‘Losing Count: US Terror Rules Drive Money Underground,’ the argument is made that current FinCEN rules might actually be hampering the government’s ability to monitor suspicious activity and intercept potential terrorism in a Wall Street Journal report.
Afraid of dealing with significant financial charges for facilitating a dubious client’s demand, banking institutions are rapidly closing accounts after filing SARs. This forces the perpetrator that is alleged use alternative methods to move money, and the funds effectively vanish from regulatory oversight.
‘What do we do, into the police arena, once the money goes underground?’ FBI crimes that are financial Patrick Fallon pondered in the piece. ‘It’s what you do not know that’s the frightening thing.’
Those who are indeed trying to facilitate money movement illegally may be drawn more and more to the casino cage as banks refuse to provide services for suspected launderers.
And while bank SARs dropped by nearly nine percent between 2013-2014, the reports increased in the casino industry by 69 % during the time frame that is same.
Casinos Feeling the Heat
FinCEN Director Jennifer Calvery said her office’s 340 workers are successfully safeguarding the US economic system and promoting nationwide security, and SARs play an important part in those efforts.
‘The information that casinos along with other finance institutions offer is used to confront terrorist organizations, rogue countries, WMD proliferators, international grand corruption, and increasingly serious cyber threats,’ Calvery stated in 2014. ‘Violating the BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) can result in FinCEN imposing civil penalties against the casino itself.’
And imposing penalties they are, as Calvery’s team levied financial fines on four gambling companies year that is last. Especially was the US Dept. of the Treasury’s $8 million penalty on Caesars Palace Las Vegas for just what FinCEN found to be always a violation that is willful of BSA and failure to stick to SAR protocols.
The recent alleged involvement of two Philippines banks in a $83 million cyber heist from the ny Federal Reserve has shined a level brighter light with this issue that is troubling and you also can bet that regulatory hands internationally will be moving into the casino industry for a closer look.
The list of sites, which investigators have stated were according to servers outside Italy and also have been impounded, are the following: www4.dgbpoker.com; www.pkgambling373.com; www.pkwildpoker.net; www.betfaktor.com; www.planetwin365.com; www.new5.betaland.com; www.new4.betaland.com; www.new2.betaland.com; www.new1.betaland.com; www.new.betaland.com; and www.betaland.com.
But based on CalvinAyre.com, two of the web sites might have been targeted in error. Austria’s SKS365 Group, which runs Planet365, has categorically distanced itself from any involvement, stating that the criminal group had exploited Planet365’s brand name reputation to lure bettors to copycat web sites.
OIA solutions Ltd, meanwhile, which owns Betaland, says that Betaland.com has been closed to Italian players for over a year, and the web sites associated with the gambling ring that used the Betaland extension did so without authorization and were ‘rightly currently darkened to access, as unlicensed.’
Tancredi Hyper Links
Italian authorities said that the ring also had links to Luigi Tancredi, a man known in Italy as ‘the King of Slots’ for his operations in the legal gambling world that is land-based.
Tancredi is believed to be the owner of DollaroPoker, and was arrested in January and accused of being the mastermind of the gambling ring that operated 12,000 online gaming and lottery video terminals in bars, cafes and gaming halls throughout Italy.