New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is no longer crisscrossing the nation on the campaign that is presidential, and as such the Republican, now in his 2nd gubernatorial term, has more time to refocus their efforts on issues facing their own state.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said enough is sufficient on Thursday, calling on state lawmakers to seize control of the city. He made his case loaded with colorful graphs displaying the reckless overspending that’s become rampant in Atlantic City.
No concern is more vital in nj-new Jersey right now than Atlantic City’s current economic crisis. On Thursday, Christie told their fellow legislators that it’s into the city’s interest that is best allowing the state to assume control of its funds.
‘Even utilizing the help plus the advice for the Emergency Manager that we applied in 2015, Atlantic City took only modest steps to rein their costs in,’ Christie said during the statehouse this week. ‘They face a $100 million budget shortfall this $100 million budget deficit this present year . . year . These are the true numbers, this will be the math, and they are the facts, and there’s no debate about that.’
In Christie’s arguments, the governor highlighted what he believes to be gross overspending on municipal workers. Armed with maps and graphs, he showed that 119 city workers were paid over $100,000 throughout the last year that is fiscal an amount which doesn’t even are 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 times. Part-time council people were collectively paid $300,000, an expense seen as extravagant in the eyes of this governor.
Unless hawaii legislature takes action to offer control of the gambling that is flailing to Trenton, Christie states he lacks the power to renegotiate contracts with public sector unions to have the ‘exorbitant costs of the town work force in check.’
Christie is contacting State Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D) to urge the chamber to pay control of Atlantic City towards the state. Prieto opposes that path, opting in favor of the PILOT (payment instead of taxes) program instead.
PILOT would enable casinos to pay taxes on a fixed routine that isn’t determined on property value or gaming revenues, which have both greatly diminished over the years, as tourism to the area has fallen.
Christie believes the PILOT program is a short-term solution that won’t help Atlantic City’s long-term forecast. Financial analyst ensemble Moody’s generally seems to agree.
‘If only the PILOT bill passes [with no other measures instituted], the town continues to face stress since the single bill is insufficient to restore Atlantic City’s fiscal health,’ the credit history corporation said recently. ‘ as the PILOT bill produces additional profits and avoids incurring casino that is additional liabilities, it is inadequate to avoid crippling deficits of $30 to $40 million a year, within the next 5 years.’
Christie believes public workers need to step up to the plate into the most useful interest of their city, but it seems some seem to be 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’s just one away, so action will need to be taken, and soon month.
IGT’s DoubleDown multiplatform social casino website has survived a course action lawsuit attempt from a disgruntled Illinois customer who claimed that the free video gaming platform offers ‘nothing more than camouflaged unlawful games of possibility.’
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 in the web site before determining she wanted to claw back every play cent. Phillips claimed that because DoubleDown uses ‘gambling mechanics’ in its games, it is tantamount to actual gambling.
Well, except for real money being involved, but other than that.
In a class action lawsuit filed during the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Phillips said she wanted the DoubleDown site to be shut down and money refunded to customers in Illinois. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all citizens for the state who’d lost over $50 playing at DoubleDown, under the antiquated Illinois Loss Recovery Act (ILRA).
The 19th century law states that any Illinois gambler who loses $50 or more gets the straight to sue the winner to have the funds right back. It also states which should the gambler that is losing sue the winner within sixth months, then ‘any person’ is permitted to sue with respect to all losers, for approximately three times the amount.
The law was originally built to protect destitute families who’d had their last dollar stolen by relatives, 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 real money, once she had played through the supply that is original of chips. Because she paid for the chips, she argues, they had a value, exactly like chips purchased in a casino, therefore the services offered by DoubleDown were tantamount to illegal gambling.
According to Phillips, also ILRA, DoubleDown was in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business techniques Act, and was guilty of unjustly enriching it self with the use of ‘gambling devices,’ another no-no under Illinois state law.
The filing would have had to establish that online social casino games is thought as ‘gambling devices,’ and that IGT had procured cash from the plaintiff within an illegal way.
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 a real income, the social casino site cannot lose anything from the idea, and so Phillips was on shaky ground.
In fact, generally, Phillips was asking the court to reconsider the very definition of gambling as it’s construed in virtually every state in the usa: specifically, the proposition that something of value is risked upon the outcome of an event or game that is subject to opportunity in the hope of receiving something different of equal or greater value.
While paying for digital potato chips comprises a financial stake, with no financial reward involved, no kind of gambling has occurred, by any legal definition, at the least.
In fact, you can say that Phillip’s decision to sue DoubleDown is a definitely better exemplory case of gambling than something that happens in the social casino site. And in this instance, it absolutely was a losing bet.
Money laundering is serious business.
Unfortunately for all those in the casino industry, criminals have long relished the attractiveness associated with the floor cage as being the perfect instrument to clean dirty money into purportedly legitimate funds.
‘Washing’ cash by trading it in for chips and then cashing it out again has become a method that is preferred of laundering by crooks. Now FinCEN wants the industry to monitor itself for better potential crimes being committed by clients, and the issues have become worldwide. (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 money.
With thousands of commercial banks into the United States, including smaller institutions that are regional FinCEN has been cracking down on money laundering by threatening non-conforming banks with financial penalties.
With no option 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 arrived a rise in suspicious activity reports being filed by the casino, securities, and insurance companies.
What does it all mean?
In a Wall Street Journal report this week titled, ‘Losing Count: US Terror Rules Drive Money Underground,’ the argument is made that current FinCEN rules may be hampering the government’s capacity to monitor dubious activity and intercept potential terrorism.
Afraid of dealing with significant financial penalties for facilitating a customer that is suspicious request, banks are rapidly closing accounts after filing SARs. This forces the alleged perpetrator to use alternative methods to move money, and the funds efficiently vanish from regulatory oversight.
‘What do we do, into the law enforcement arena, whenever money goes underground?’ FBI financial crimes specialist Patrick Fallon pondered into 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 per cent during the same time framework.
FinCEN Director Jennifer Calvery said her office’s 340 workers are successfully safeguarding the usa economic system and promoting national security, and SARs play an essential role in those efforts.
‘The information that casinos and other financial institutions provide is used to confront terrorist organizations, rogue nations, 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 charges 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 had been the US Dept. of the Treasury’s $8 million penalty on Caesars Palace Las Vegas for what FinCEN found to become a violation that is willful of BSA and failure to stick to SAR protocols.
The recent alleged involvement of two Philippines banks in an $83 million cyber heist from the New York Federal Reserve has shined a level brighter light with this troubling issue, and you can bet that regulatory arms globally are moving into the casino industry for a better look.
The list of web sites, which detectives have stated were according to servers outside Italy and have now been impounded, are as follows: 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 according to CalvinAyre.com, two of the websites 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 reputation to lure bettors to copycat internet sites.
OIA Services Ltd, meanwhile, which owns Betaland, says that Betaland.com has been closed to players that are italian over a year, and the web sites related to the gambling band that used the Betaland expansion did so without permission and were ‘rightly already darkened to get into, as unlicensed.’
Italian authorities said that the ring also had links to Luigi Tancredi, a guy known in Italy as ‘the King of Slots’ for his operations in the legal gambling world that is land-based.
Tancredi is considered to be the dog 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 pubs, cafes and gaming halls https://lucky88slotmachine.com/pelican-pete/ throughout Italy.