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SportsTranscript
00:00Well, first, let's get to the story in Pennsylvania here, because this is a topic we actually
00:08have not covered at all, which is the sports betting operators being able to take wagers
00:15over the phone.
00:16Okay.
00:17So let's kind of dive back into sports history here.
00:21Illegally, right?
00:22Illegally, for many, many years, bookies, right?
00:26So to speak.
00:27Like this was, you watch the movies, okay?
00:29I'm not saying anything that nobody knows, you know, you see them on the phone.
00:33Give me this on this.
00:34Give me this on that.
00:35Okay.
00:36We know that's illegal.
00:37Offshores, I believe if I'm not mistaken in the past, again, illegal also did this.
00:43So is this legal to take bets over the phone at any place in the country?
00:49Because it would appear that in Pennsylvania, it is not.
00:52It is not.
00:53And it is still considered a proxy bet because the person is physically not in the sports
00:57book.
00:58And sure enough, the Pennsylvania sports betting regulators find live casino early, or well,
01:04I guess it was last month now at this point, because we're now into July, that's bonkers.
01:09But yeah, they find live casino, $100,000 because a few employees took 15 bets from
01:15a better over the phone totaling more than $250,000, $270,000, I forget the exact amount,
01:22but that's a big chunk of change to do over the phone.
01:26I can understand how somebody might think, hey, I can go to the sports book and place
01:30a bet.
01:31Maybe I can just go ahead and call it, especially when you can actually make bets on your cell
01:34phone from an app.
01:37So maybe that is a little bit of confusion, but sure enough, it is still a proxy bet.
01:41And it came down and they were fined.
01:44The better was placed on an involuntary exclusion list.
01:48The employees were fired and let go and had their employee sports betting licenses or
01:54gaming licenses revoked.
01:57So they won't be working at casinos anymore, I don't think.
02:00And yeah, so yeah, basically, to your point, it's still illegal, no matter what it might
02:05seem.
02:06Sports betting is legal, but only in certain ways.
02:10And I think this points to another thing that we were talking about, or I was listening
02:15to a great panel up in Canada about is about, the main reason to regulate and legalize sports
02:21betting and online gambling is to bring things that are happening in the shadows, whether
02:27it's a corner bookie or an offshore sports book, and bring it into the light.
02:31And then you can see, you know, what's actually happening.
02:35Without this, you wouldn't catch these people doing these things.
02:38For example, there were another 11 bettors that were placed on involuntary exclusion
02:42lists in Pennsylvania for creating accounts under different names and using different
02:47debit cards to deposit and then take it out.
02:51And so it's a type of money laundering or fraud or whatever it might be considered.
02:56And they did it with a couple hundred thousand dollars to wash that money.
03:01And that was caught because of the things that are in place now in regulatory framework.
03:07And that is, again, that panel that I'm actually working on a story right now over at LSR about
03:13that panel, kind of the really big takeaways of why it's important to regulate a market
03:18and how important it is to have the regulated market to ensure sports integrity.
03:23And I think that's a big issue now, as we see more and more athletes getting caught
03:27up in it and people say, well, sports betting is legal.
03:30This is why it's happening.
03:31Well, no, it probably could have been happening before.
03:34We just didn't know about it.