According to a story broken by Reuters, U.S. officials are going to put the onus on casinos to verify where high rollers’ funds are coming from. It could take at least for FinCEN to develop this new law, “likely to require casinos to get more information about certain customers in order to shed light on high-risk transactions such as international wires and large cash deposits, said the sources, who asked not to be named.” It’s described as part of a sea change in the relationship between the U.S. government and the casino industry, one in which the latter will come under might tighter scrutiny.
FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery fired a warning shot over the industry’s bow recently when she told assembled executives, “When some casinos say that probing their customers about their activities outside of the casino will drive customers away, I sense that they feel that it is not their responsibility to protect their institutions, and our financial system as a whole, from being used by illicit actors. You ask your customers many questions about their preferences; you can and should get information about their sources of funds to meet your obligations to identify and report suspicious activity.”
Las Vegas Sands recently paid FinCEN $47 million to settle irregularities at Venelazzo and now the agency is looking at Caesars Entertainment. From the looks of it, the casino industry can look forward to an unwanted but intimate relationship with FinCEN for some time to come.
Would you believe that bridge and canasta are illegal in South Carolina? It’s the legacy of an 1802 law forbidding card or dice games. In all this time, nobody has ever thought to repeal it or bring it into the current century. State Sen. Tom Davis (R) is using the threat of litigation to try and get some of the more innocuous games legalized. In a 2012 ruling on the arrest of a large group of poker players, the chief justice of the Palmetto State’s Supreme Court wrote that the law wasn’t germane to the prosecution in question but was “hopelessly outdated.” So Davis is planning to sue to have the law thrown out unless its supporters come together and make some common-sense fixes in it. S&G wishes him luck.
Penn National Gaming continues to move aggressively. Its latest acquisition target is Miami Jai-Alai, which it hopes to buy out of bankruptcy. So too, however, does Mohegan Sun. And now there’s a $155 million bid on the table from creditor ABC Funding. That still might be a bargain price, with the facility having been valued at $180 million. Although jai-alai loses a million a year, the fronton’s slots bring in $1 million a week. Hence the feeding frenzy in South Florida.
It’s still a couple of months before the Massachusetts Supreme Court will rule on a petition to put a repeal of casino gambling on the November ballot. However, Springfield 
Mayor Domenic Sarno isn’t waiting around for the outcome. With nine Springfield residents, he’s filed a friend-of-the-court brief that argues that statewide referendums cannot be held on local issues and that the casino-enabling law only applies to his city and three others — Everett, Revere and Plainville. Sarno’s argument is complementary to that of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley who argues that a repeal would interfere with implied contracts between companies and cities, violating the state’s contracts clause. Casino opponents reply, in essence, tough luck: Gaming companies should expect state laws to change, so suck it up.
I will not ever have to worry about showing up with a load of cash at a casino but I would either just lie or tell them it was none of their business. This is just someone else trying to get someone else to do their job.
So, FinCen, which isn’t congress, is going to enforce a new law they’re inventing? Yeah, who needs an actual rule of law? Let’s just let government run roughshod over our rights.