ANOTHER MAJOR SPORTS BETTING RING DISMANTLED IN N.Y.

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$2 million ring used Internet sites offshore to place bets

New York law enforcement authorities mounted another major sportsbetting raid this week, deploying over 200 police officers in an operation that dismantled a $2 million organisation.  Local police departments from New Rochelle, Mount Pleasant, Pleasantville, White Plains, Yonkers and Yorktown provided assistance in the raids on 30 different locations, in which 18 operators and bookies were arrested.

Associated Press reports that the bets - on professional and college sports, with limits as high as $100 000 - had been funneled by computer to a "wire room" in Costa Rica, Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore told the news service.

"You name it, they were betting on it," said Steven Vandervelden, head of DiFiore's criminal enterprise division. There was some online casino betting as well as the sports wagers, he said.

The district attorney held a news conference behind a display of guns, steroid-filled syringes, marijuana, computers, printers, and nearly $1 million in cash, all confiscated from the suspects during the weekend arrests, which were enabled by 44 search warrants at 30 locations. Thirty eavesdropping devices helped in obtaining the search warrants. Also seized were 15 vehicles and 2 illegal handguns along with computers, cell phones and other evidence.

Claiming that the ring was "very extensive," DiFiore said that the arrests were made in Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester, along with Essex and Somerset counties in New Jersey.

Bettors, once they were established with bookies, could place their wages in any of three ways: online, at one of the 60 affiliated Internet sites, using a username and password; calling the central business office in Costa Rica; or calling a bookie, or "sheetholder," Vandervelden said.

Among those arrested was Adam Green (34) of Manhattan, identified as the creator of the enterprise and many of its Internet sites and domain names. Vandervelden said Green was "at the top of the food chain." The operation worked through approximately 60 related offshore websites.

Also arrested was Anthony Giovaniello (37) of Hawthorne, N.Y., who allegedly led the Westchester operation and made sure the bookies collected. Both were charged with enterprise corruption, which carries a maximum sentence of eight-to-25 years in prison. They were to be arraigned later Monday in Harrison.

Sixteen others also were charged, all but two with enterprise corruption; one was accused of promoting gambling and one was charged with weapon possession. Vandervelden said one suspect was a stockbroker.

Officials revealed that the investigation began in October 2005 with information obtained by the police in Harrison, of Westchester County, said Harrison police chief David Hall. He said more arrests were possible.

Westchester DA's office issued a press release which described how part of the operation used the Internet, explaining: "These Internet gambling website companies have numerous bookmakers utilizing their services and apparently charge the bookmakers, among other things, a price per head (PPH) for each active bettor a bookmaker has betting with that enterprise."

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Online Sportsbetting Named In Gambino Probe

2008年2月8日周五 博彩518 mgowanbo.cc

Gambino family at the centre of massive enforcement swoop in New Jersey

More than 62 people, including leading members of an organised crime family, have been named in a U.S. indictment following a massive police swoop in New York this week.  And online sportsbetting is alleged to be among the range of criminal charges that include some of the most serious drug, violence and loan-sharking felonies on the books.

The Gambino family, long associated with organised crime, is at the centre of the numerous charges laid by the U.S. Attorney's office for the region.

Authorities carried out one of the largest Mafia takedowns in recent memory, reports MSNBC, scooping up dozens of reputed Gambino members and charging them with gangland crimes spanning three decades.

The federal indictment in Brooklyn named 62 people, including the three highest-ranking members of the Gambino clan and the brother and nephew of the late John Gotti, the notorious boss who ran the family in its heyday.

State prosecutors separately charged 26 others with running a gambling ring that took nearly $10 million in bets on professional and college sports.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Thursday that the Gambinos' sports book operation substituted "the traditional wire room and street corner bookie who penciled in wagers in a little black book with offshore based Internet Web sites and toll-free numbers through which they were able to manage numerous gambling accounts."

He did not identify the four Costa Rican websites involved, but claimed these were being used in conjunction with toll free phone numbers and illegal wire rooms to allow illegal gambling activity. The gambling brought in over $10 million to the Gambino family in two years, Brown added.

The New York raids coincided with an Italian operation, code-named "Old Bridge" and centered on the Sicilian capital of Palermo, targeting Mafia figures who were strengthening contacts between mob groups in Italy and the United States.

Authorities said the investigations, though technically unconnected, signaled an international attempt to disrupt Sicilian ties to the Gambino family, which has been decimated by prosecutions since family head John Gotti's highly publicised prosecution and fall. Gotti was sentenced to life in prison in 1992, and died in 2002.

The U.S. investigation ensnared whatever members of the Gambino hierarchy were still at liberty and will bring "closure to crimes from the past," U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell said, including drug trafficking, robberies and other crimes dating to the 1970s.

The probe's scope shows the mob "still exists in the city and the state of New York," said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. "We like to think that it's a vestige of the past. It's not."

Among the 29 people arrested or sought in Italy were members of clans linked to Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the Sicilian Mafia boss arrested in November, Italian officials said. "We have cut short a dangerous connection that would have been the basis for new illegal trafficking," Palermo Prosecutor Francesco Messineo said.

When Lo Piccolo was arrested, investigators warned that as part of his attempt to become the Cosa Nostra's next "boss of bosses," he had been working to mend ties with U.S.-Italian clans such as the Gambinos and the Inzerillos.

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