Two former Houston police sergeants are among those being investigated by federal authorities for allegedly running an illegal online sports gambling business with links to the Dallas area, court records show.
Brian Jordan, 52, retired from the force in July after 23 years with the department, a police spokesman said. Steven Glezman, 43, retired in September after 20 years.
Glezman had worked in the burglary and theft unit, and Jordan was assigned to the vice division. Both men were relieved of their duties in May when federal agents raided their homes. No criminal charges have been filed in the case.
“I wasn’t involved. That will all come out in the end,” said Jordan, who declined to comment further.
Glezman and his attorney could not be reached.
The men are named in forfeiture lawsuits filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in Plano to try to keep cash, sports memorabilia, jewelry and other items that were seized.
“This is an investigation that has involved our cooperation for many weeks and months, involving several federal agencies,” Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland said at the time.
Bettors who took part in the gambling business live in Dallas, Plano and McKinney, as well as in Florida, California, Colorado, Georgia and Tennessee, court records show.
Sports betting is illegal in most states. But such schemes have proliferated on the Internet in recent years using computer servers in the Caribbean.
The latest forfeiture lawsuits were filed two years after the same U.S. attorney’s office in Plano broke up a similar enterprise.
In that case, a group of retired business executives and bookies ran a sports betting business for over a decade, netting more than $5 million in sports wagers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Stover was the lead prosecutor in the case and also filed the forfeiture lawsuits in the current case.
Timothy Large, 47, who lives outside Houston, also is a target of the current investigation, records show. He and his attorney could not be reached for comment. Court records indicate that Large, Glezman and Jordan were “conspirators” in the scheme, but the exact nature of their relationship is unclear.
Large told Homeland Security Investigations agents that his only income comes from illegal gambling and that he has earned between $200,000 and $300,000 per year as a bookmaker for roughly the past decade, records show.
Stover said in court documents that the group has run the off-shore gambling operation since 2010.
“The conspirators illegally accepted wagers on sporting events through various Internet websites hosted in Costa Rica,” he said in a Dec. 11 forfeiture lawsuit.
Jordan, Glezman and Large deposited a total of at least $3.7 million into various bank accounts over several years, the forfeiture lawsuits said.
Glezman has spent a lot of money on resorts, travel, cruises, sports memorabilia and vehicles, court records show.
Among the items the government wants from Glezman are his house and the 17-acre ranch it sits on in Montgomery valued at $605,000. In May, agents seized numerous items from him including two assault rifles, autographed Mike Tyson boxing shorts and a signed Jerry Rice 49ers jersey, court records show.
A forfeiture lawsuit also has been filed against Large’s $446,461 home in Cypress. Agents seized sports memorabilia and numerous other items from the home including signed Muhammad Ali boxing gloves, a Larry Bird basketball jersey and a signed Super Bowl football.
Agents also seized items from Jordan’s $546,135 home in Houston, including watches. They said he has spent money on airfare, hotels, country clubs, golf, private school tuition and auto maintenance.
In the previous North Texas online sports gambling case, 18 men were prosecuted and more than $10 million worth of property was confiscated. But only the ringleader went to prison. He served one year, and his attorney called the business a “victimless crime.”
John Bales, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, called it the largest bookmaking case in his district’s history. He said the punishments were light — all but one of the defendants got probation — because federal gambling laws don’t carry heavy sentences.
ESPN's "Outside the Lines" has obtained a notebook that indicates Pete Rose bet on baseball while he was a player, including on the Cincinnati Reds while he was a member of the team. This could dash any slim hope he had for reinstatement to Major League Baseball, the first step toward his being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
To clarify: This revelation doesn't come as news to many who long suspected Rose bet on the Reds as a player. Baseball's all-time hits leader has always maintained that his gambling occurred only while he was a manager, but anyone with a rudimentary understanding of gambling addiction should have been skeptical. There was also sworn testimony by his bookie that Rose bet on the Reds from 1984 to 1986, his final years as a player. The notebook is, however, the first documented proof dispelling Rose's claims.
It couldn't have come at a worse time. Commissioner Rob Manfred has been more open than his predecessors to hearing out Rose in his application for reinstatement, submitted in March. Manfred later announced he would allow Rose to participate in festivities for the All-Star Game in Cincinnati in July; we'll see if this new evidence affects that decision. MLB is in the process of reviewing Rose's reinstatement case, and has yet to comment on ESPN's report.
It's another matter how this evidence is judged in the court of public opinion. That Rose bet on games involving the Reds will be a breaking point for many fans. There's no evidence that he bet against his team or that he threw games out of gambling concerns, but that's beside the point. MLB rules don't distinguish between bets as a player or as a manager, nor do they distinguish between bets for or against one's own team.
The notebook will probably be the final straw for some Rose supporters who can no longer defend his lying. Of course, the question then is what makes this lie worse than all the others he's told in the past three decades. If you thought Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame before Monday, this revelation doesn't really change the substance of that argument, just its optics.
Perhaps the future of Rose's reinstatement bid lies in those optics. The substance of the documents might not be new to Manfred's office, but the revelation of another lie supports the view that Rose hasn't sufficiently reformed his attitude or his lifestyle. When Commissioner Bart Giamatti banned Rose from the game in 1989, he said he would keep an open mind for the prospect of reinstatement so long as Rose changed his ways. "The burden is entirely on Mr. Rose to reconfigure his life in a way he deems appropriate," Giamatti said.
That standard was upheld by commissioners Fay Vincent and Bud Selig. Meanwhile, Rose has hardly seemed to have eradicated gambling from his life; he lives in Las Vegas and told the Wall Street Journal he bets on other sports. His pattern of getting caught in a lieseems to render his campaign for reinstatement less viable.
And that really speaks to the heart of why gambling, not Alex Rodriguez, remains baseball's No. 1 scourge: perception. It's not about whether Rose actually bet on or threw individual games -- it's about the hundreds of thousands of dollars of going to mob-connected bookies that could potentially put you in the position of having to throw future games. It's about baseball never returning to those post-Black Sox years when the decline in trust in the game threatened its very existence.
Wherever you fall on Pete Rose, this latest report doesn't provide much new evidence to change your stance on his Hall of Fame credentials, but it might change how you feel about continuing to support a man who makes it ever more difficult to keep coming down on his side.
Wayne T. Price, Ilana Kowarski and Dave Berman 12:10 a.m. EST January 31, 2015
We all know what Sunday is — it’s Super Bowl Sunday, the day for one of the most-watched sporting events in the world.
For hardcore wagerers, as well as the casual “You wanna bet” types, Sunday also is known as the Super Bowl of gambling. The website superbowlbets.com predicts more than 200 million people will bet on the game, part of an estimated about $10 billion Super Bowl betting industry in the United States.
“The Super Bowl is fun to bet on simply because it is such a cultural event these days,” said Jimmy Boyd, who runs the Walnut, California-headquartered BoydsBets.com. “Trying to win a few extra bucks is always fun, but when you can combine it with something that virtually everyone you know is going to be watching, it really amplifies the enjoyment.”
For Brevard County, and all of Florida, sports betting is illegal, though still very common.
There are straight-up bets between individuals and organized office pools where managers often turn a blind eye to the activity. At many gatherings tonight, party goers will pick a Super Bowl square for a small cash payout. And of course, there’s also betting through online gambling sites.
Sports gambling is growing so large that last month the U.S. Treasury Department threw a warning flag at casinos.
“Increases in sports betting conducted on behalf of third parties are facilitating criminal activity and posing a money laundering risk to the U.S financial system,” Treasury said in a letter on Dec. 24.
Because of the popularity of the Super Bowl, and sports betting, FLORIDA TODAY took a look at what’s happening with this issue on the Space Coast.
Victory Casino
There is only one place to gamble — legally — on the Super Bowl in Brevard County and that’s on the Victory Casino Cruise ship. Even then, you have to be international waters to make your bet and collect your winnings.
Passengers already have been laying plenty of action .
“The betting is happening on every cruise” for the past two weeks said Pete Lynch, the casino marketing manager at Victory Casino Cruises, Lynch said.
And the betting isn’t just on who will win the game. Gamblers can bet on dozens of things related to the game — even which team wins the coin toss before the game starts and how long it will take Idina Menzel to sing the national anthem.
Naturally, all the ship’s televisions will be tuned into the game — 20 screens in the ship’s sports book area and 10 at other locations.
Some additions:
•A Super Bowl “tailgate” party with burgers, chicken wings and nachos. •Cocktail servers and card dealers in referee-striped outfits. •At least five former National Football League players mingling with the customers. Lynch said some of them have played in previous Super Bowls.
“It’s going to be a fun day,” Lynch said.
It costs $10 to get on the ship. Sunday cruises are noon to 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. to midnight.
Drinks are free for customers actively betting in the slot machine or table game areas. But if you’re just there to watch the game, be prepared to buy your own beers. Sports bars and office pools
The beers and cocktails will be flowing at Duffy’s Sports Grill in Melbourne, where a full house is expected. Duffy’s has been selling tickets for $25 each for guaranteed seating.
While you can expect wings galore and loud cheering, don’t expect to see any gambling. And if anyone at Duffy’s is seen wagering, they can expect a swift reprimand.
“Frankly I’ve never come across that,” said Renee Masse, assistant general manager at Duffy’s. “If we saw something like that taking place, we’d tell them to stop and go some place else.”
Though there are probably informal office pools in Brevard, there are few employers that sanction them. Many strongly discourage any kind of gambling in a work setting.
In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, it is common for human resources departments to send out warnings to workers telling them not to make sports bets on office property, said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, Inc., a national employment consultancy based in Chicago.
Challenger said betting in the workplace is a risky move, since it can result in a formal reprimand or termination.
“In the banking industry or the financial sector, in particular, gambling is counter to the culture,” he said. “Those are companies that make their name by keeping people’s money safe and making wise investments, which is the complete opposite of gambling.” Arguments against gambling laws
Some in Brevard say that gambling in moderation is harmless, and believe that Florida’s laws against sports betting are hypocritical, given that there is an official state lottery.
That’s the view of Jamie Nance, an attorney for Nance Cacciatore law firm in Melbourne.
“I imagine that there is a vocal minority that opposes gambling for moralistic or religious reasons, but look, man has been gambling since the dawn of time,” Nance said. “It’s probably one of the world’s oldest professions.”
Nance said given strained government resources it seems unwise for law enforcement to spend money on the incarceration of gamblers and bookies “for relatively victimless vices.” If any punishment was warranted, it should be a small fine.
“There supposedly is a big libertarian movement in this country, but for some reason with the libertarians I know, their philosophy stops with gambling and prostitution,” Nance said. “Even if you disapprove of those activities, regulating them is still a government intrusion.” Enforcement
State gambling statutes say sports betting is a second-degree misdemeanor. Those convicted can get up to 60 days of prison time and a maximum fine of $500.
There are stiffer penalties for “bookies,” a person who accepts bets based on set odds..
Bookmaking is a third-degree felony for first-time offenders and a second-degree felony for repeat offenders. A bookie’s first conviction can lead to a five-year prson sentence and $5,000 pine. The penalties escalate for repeat offenders. Those who are twice convicted of bookmaking can get a 15-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.
Bill Respess, the chief trial attorney in Brevard, said that law enforcement rarely prosecutes individual bettors and primarily focuses its energy on “the people that are making money off the operation.”
In the past, Brevard has prosecuted operators of internet gambling cafes, but gambling prosecutions are rare, Respess said.
“I don’t see us spending a lot of time enforcing the gambling law to prevent Super Bowl bets between friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s legal,” he said. “There are lots of things that go on that are illegal. I hear fireworks go off around the holidays all the time. When people are caught breaking the laws, we enforce them.” Addiction
Arnie Wexler, a self-described former compulsive gambler who operates a national hotline for gambling addicts, said that the Super Bowl is the time of year when temptations for gambling addicts are the most prevalent and intense.
“The Super Bowl is a hotbed for gambling. Compulsive gambling is an all-year kind of thing, but what happens is that the Super Bowl is the last game for gamblers to bet on in the football season,” he said. “With compulsive gamblers, if they’ve won money before, they’re putting it all on the line right now, and if they’ve lost money, they’re trying to get it back during the Super Bowl. It’s the get-out bet for a gambler.”
Wexler said that every year after the Super Bowl, he gets inundated with desperate phone calls to his hotline, 1-800-LAST-BET. In his new book, “All Bets Are Off,” he shares how he recovered from a gambling addiction and describes how others can do the same.
“Nobody really cares about gambling addicts. They look at alcoholics and drug addicts as sick people, but they see compulsive gamblers as crooks,” he said. “The motive of my book is to get people to understand that compulsive gambling is an addiction, and it’s treatable.”
Contact Price at 321-242-3658 or wprice@floridatoday.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @Fla2dayBiz.
Giving props
A big part of Super Bowl gambling is proposition, or “rop” betting, wagering on aspects of the game other than the outcome of the score. Examples:
Will the winning coin toss land on heads or tails?
Will the performer singing the National Anthem remember the words?
Which player will score the first touchdown?
Which team will score first?
Which team will score last?
Will the first score of the game be a field goal or touchdown?
How many songs will the half-time performer sing?
Which team will have the most penalty yards?
Which quarterback will have the most passing yards?
Who will be named Super Bowl MVP? Source: American Gaming Association, Indianapolis Star research
Super Bowl XLIX is coming up on Sunday. It's the world's biggest sports spectacle, and also the event with the heaviest bets. Legal betting will rake in over $100 million this year, but that's dwarfed by illegal betting, which may total $3.7 billion.
So for problem gamblers, the Super Bowl may be a the last chance for a big win. A loss could be especially catastrophic.
Think you're a big roller?
"I lost a hundred thousand dollars on one bet," said a man we're calling Al. He's the head of Gamblers Anonymous in Hawaii. He lost the 100 grand rolling dice.
"I had 4, and I did not make the 4. I threw a 7," he said. "And it's the worst feeling of your life. But if you make the 4, it's the best feeling of your life."
Al said he even had to ask his relatives for about a quarter of a million dollars to pay gambling debts.
"During my 16 or 17 years gambling compulsively, we estimate that I lost over two million dollars."
According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, 10,000 people in Hawaii are pathological gamblers, those whose wagering has a severe negative effect of his or her job, relationships or mental health. Another 20,000 are problem gamblers, who wager despite possible negative consequences.
The Washington, D.C., group said last year, it received 2,759 calls for help from Hawaii because there are no local hotlines for gambling addiction. And since legal gambling doesn't exist in Hawaii, there's no public funding for treatment and prevention. Those programs could be useful on Monday, as Al expects hardcore gamblers to go big on Super Sunday.
"Football season is ending. The Super Bowl is the wrap up of this. So people are running out of games to bet on, and they can't recover all their losses and they can't bet enough to recover their season."
"I wouldn't be surprised if there were an increased number of people calling G.A. (Gamblers Anonymous) after the Super Bowl," said Dr. Robin-Marie Shepherd, a University of Auckland professor who has done research on gambling in Hawaii. "That would be interesting to find out if that's the case." Meanwhile, Al is glad to have kicked the addiction: "The two most important things in my life was my children and my wife, and I was willing to give that away to continue to gamble." For help in Hawaii, Gamblers Anonymous has help here.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -
Super Bowl weekend is not just the climax of the football season -- it is the biggest weekend of the year for legal and illegal gambling.
Only social betting is legal in Hawaii, but the state still has its share of desperate gamblers according to the leader of Hawaii's only chapter of Gamblers Anonymous.
"Football season is ending the Superbowl is the wrap-up of this, so people are running out of games to bet on."
Speaking under the pseudonym "Al" the chapter leader said the festive weekend is a frightening time for many players.
"They can't recover all their loses and they can't bet enough to recover their season. So we are getting a lot of phone calls from people asking about how to stop."
Al says recovery is similar to recovery from a drug addiction and can take years. He himself took nine years and multiple lapses before he gave up betting completely 21 years ago. National experts say Hawaii does not have the enough resources to prevent chronic gambling or help wean gamblers of the addiction, primarily because of the assumption that gambling addictions would not be as common in a state with no legal gaming.
Click HERE for more information on how to get help in Hawaii.
Queens gambling ring busted days ahead of Super Bowl
Five suspects, including alleged kingpin Christopher Morrissey, of Yonkers, were charged in the operation that collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets annually on the big game and other sporting events.
Doug Menuez/Getty ImagesA Queens gambling ring was busted and its operators charged with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets annually.A lucrative Queens gambling ring was sacked by investigators just three days before the biggest betting day of the year: the Super Bowl. Five suspects were charged in a Thursday indictment with collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets annually on pro football, basketball, hockey and baseball, along with college hoops and football. Two other men were charged in a separate indictment with promoting gambling in Queens. The indictments “send a clear signal that when it comes to illegal gambling in Queens County, all bets are off,” said Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown. The charges followed a two-year joint investigation by the organized crime operations of both the NYPD and the district attorney’s offices. Wiretapped phones, along with surveillance and intelligence information, led to the 34-count indictment, authorities said. The ring used a website and a toll-free number to keep their operation easily available to interested gamblers, authorities charged. Though a relatively small operation, the ring was able to “reap huge profits” between February 2013-April 2014, said Brown. Christopher Morrissey, 42, of Yonkers, was identified as the kingpin of the operation and charged with enterprise corruption, money-laundering, promoting gambling and conspiracy. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Arrested along with him were Mitch Fusco, 51, of Yonkers; Louis Cavalli, 56, of Yonkers; Sean Murtagh, 42, of Mount Vernon; and Brian Hull, 37, of the Bronx. Two Queens men were charged with promoting gambling by taking more than five bets totaling more than $5,000 per day between Nov. 4-14, 2013.
ST. LOUIS — U.S. casinos must take steps to combat illegal sports gambling, the Treasury Department has told an industry group in a letter that came just weeks before the Super Bowl, one of the biggest betting events of the year.
“Increases in sports betting conducted on behalf of third parties are facilitating criminal activity and posing a money laundering risk to the U.S financial system,” the Treasury said in a letter made public on Friday. The letter was dated Dec. 24.
The global International Center for Sport Security reported last year that 80 percent of global sport betting is illegally transacted, and therefore invisible to authorities. It said $140 billion is laundered annually through sport betting. The report urged governments to correct what it called a vulnerability of sport betting to organized crime.
The letter with guidance for casinos from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network came in response to a Dec. 22 Thomson Reuters article, which said the department was likely to press casinos to take a greater role in fighting illegal sport book activity.
The U.S. National Football League’s Super Bowl on Feb. 1 yields one of the busiest sports book weekends of the year.
The FinCEN letter was addressed to the president of the American Gaming Association, the trade group for the U.S. casino industry. The AGA, citing the Thomson Reuters article, had asked FinCEN about its plans to issue guidance.
FinCEN noted that prior to the news of its planned guidance, it had been “planning on communicating to the casino industry directly with respect to a particular concern in this regard.”
Regulators and law enforcement authorities are concerned by intelligence suggesting that criminals are making bets with legal sports book operations, using intermediaries, or “runners,” to place bets, the Treasury bureau said.
“In these cases, the intermediaries rarely voluntarily disclose to the casino that a transaction is being conducted on behalf of a third party, thereby disguising the third party’s role in the transaction and obscuring the source of funds used to place the bet. This poses distinct money laundering risks for casinos,” FinCEN said in the letter.
Sports gambling is legal in only four U.S. states, including Nevada, home of Las Vegas. But illegal sports betting operations around the world, including online outfits, sometimes offset bets they receive by placing casino wagers, law enforcement sources told Thomson Reuters.
Runners have been known to loiter at casinos, keeping numerous mobile phones and tablets near them to receive orders from illegal gambling rings.
The letter reminds casinos that the Bank Secrecy Act requires them to ask gamblers whether their bets are for themselves, and to report any wagers for third parties as suspicious activity. The letter also reminds casinos that they must take a risk-based approach to compliance, focusing on gaming that presents the greatest money laundering threat.
In a statement responding to FinCEN’s letter on Friday, AGA President and Chief Executive Officer Geoff Freeman said the group “welcomes continued guidance from FinCEN.” He added that “members are committed to robust anti-money laundering measures” and that they “invest significant resources to tailor risk-based compliance programs for every corner of the casino, including sports books.”
Freeman said the risk of money laundering “is far greater in the vast, unregulated, illegal sports betting market than in the highly regulated, legal gaming industry.
“While casinos routinely look for suspicious bets at sports books and have worked with law enforcement to identify illegal activity, in some cases leading to criminal convictions, no such oversight exists for the illegal sports betting market,” he said.
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