According to the New York Times, 27 people have been arrested in connection with an offshore sports betting operation, with authorities still on the lookout for three others. The operation, which apparently took in more than half a billion dollars in just over two years, offered odds on football, basketball, hockey, and many other sports.
According to the district attorney of Queens, Richard A. Brown, evidence has been uncovered that the bookmaker operation had links to two New York organized crime syndicates, the Gambino and Genovese crime families.
Since sports betting is illegal in most of the US, accounts were maintained from a Panama center, with various web sites and toll-free telephone numbers used to accept wagers.
Now, the first thought that came to my mind was this: if US lawmakers do not officially sanction, regulate and tax sports betting, only the naïve will believe that the citizens in whose interest they claim to rule will not partake in sports betting. Of course, many people continue their efforts at making (or losing) some hard earned, only thing is, organized crime controls it.
Sound familiar? In the twenties and thirties enough US politicians also got it in their heads that alcohol corrupt the citizenry, so they outlawed its use. Who benefited? Al Capone, and organized crime syndicates.
Every phase of social life presents aspects of interest not only to its immediate votaries, but to many who feel interested in the tastes of their countrymen, and in that sense it is hoped the present volume will be found instructive and amusing, not to sportsmen only but to others who do not pretend to such a designation.
Many readers will, probably, recognize in these pages incidents with which they are already familiar, but not a few of the stories will undoubtedly be new to them. Other readers will find the volume largely descriptive of what is, or has been, going on around them. Whether viewed historically, socially, or as matters of taste and habit, such circumstances and incidents bulk largely in the life of the people and necessarily attract attention.
Although much interested in the sporting habits and customs of past and present generations, the Editor may be permitted to state that he does not identify himself with the practices described or the opinions given by the writers drawn upon. And readers of the following pages, whatever their tastes may be, will doubtless be able to form their own conclusions of the moral, social, and historical bearing of what is narrated. All that has been essayed in forming this compilation is the brinofing together of such annals, incidents, and opinions of sport and gambling as most vividly bring into notice their salient features.
As will be seen on perusal, greater space has been accorded to ” the turf ” and its surroundings than to other sports and pastimes, horse-racing being regarded by the people of the present day as containing elements of greater interest than any other phase of sporting life.
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From the book, Sporting anecdotes : being anecdotal annals, descriptions, tales and incidents of horse-racing, betting, card-playing, pugilism, gambling, cock-fighting, pedestrianism, fox-hunting, angling, shooting, and other sports by “ELLANGOWAN”
