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SportsTranscript
00:00Okay, so, you know, the idea of cracking down on illegal sports books, we've known this
00:10going on for years, there's a lot of people who feel that more attention needs to be paid
00:14toward this.
00:15So, we do have one story here, that's where we're going to end here, Matt.
00:18It does seem like, though, the reason why this particular illegal sports book was pinched
00:23was because of an association with a casino.
00:26It feels like that's more of the story here, am I wrong about that?
00:30Well, it's that, and that it's also that if the casino is the casino that it seems like
00:35it is, then this is also the casino that was involved with Matthew Boyer, who was the illegal
00:42bookmaker that took those bets from Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter.
00:47So this is, it's a bigger web that was weaved here, it looks like, and his name is Damian
00:54LaForbes, and he pled guilty to operating the sports book and to, excuse me, money laundering,
01:02couldn't think of a word there.
01:03He's a poker player, and he spent a lot of time in Vegas.
01:06And why it seems like it could be the same casino is that the Nevada Current back in
01:13May reported that LaForbes owed that casino, Resorts World Las Vegas, $12.3 million after
01:21nearly four dozen trips to the casino.
01:24Now, LaForbes was said to cash checks at this casino and to receive chips for the casino
01:31in terms of payment.
01:33And Craig, some of the numbers here are just staggering.
01:35He executed at least 17 personal checks over about two years at Casino A, is how it's known
01:40in the paperwork.
01:42That was for $9.1 million, including a $1 million check last April.
01:47$2.8 million in cash was also presented to that casino in the same time frame.
01:52Craig, he bet more than $148 million over those two years in Las Vegas before he was
02:01caught. So that's a lot of money, and certainly that $9.1 and $2.8 don't add up to $148.
02:08So there's a lot to still be found out here.
02:11And you know what, Craig, this is just me from a personal example, but if I was doing
02:18something nefarious, I don't know that I would stay necessarily just in one spot.
02:22There are a lot of casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Craig.
02:25And even off of the Strip, there are a lot of casinos that have sportsbooks.
02:28And, you know, you just don't know how far this reaches, how far it goes.
02:34It's great that we are catching these guys and weeding them out.
02:38But it's, you know, those headlines that the sports betting industry hates to see.