It seems less and less likely that an internet poker bill authored by Assemblyman Adam Gray will pass the California Assembly as the usual suspects continue to block the road to adoption. Two gaming tribe coalitions with apparently irreconcilable differences stand athwart that road, and neither of them will budge.
The main impasse remains, as it has for months, the issue of a “bad actor” clause that would prevent PokerStars from participating as a partner with several gaming tribes.
By one definition PokerStars is a “bad actor” because it paid a multi-million dollar settlement to the U.S. Justice Department in 2006. That’s the definition that the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians insist must be included in any iPoker bill that has their support. Otherwise they will do their best to derail it.
The tribes that have PokerStars as their partner, which include the Morongo Band of Mission Indians and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and the card clubs that are also part of that coalition, are understandably not enthusiastic to embrace that requirement.
Steve Stallings, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, and a council member of the Rincon Band of Mission Indians, whose chairman Bo Mazzetti has tried to broker a compromise on the issue, expressed his frustration last week that the poker legislation was being “passed over.”
In a separate but related development, one of the card clubs that has partnered with PokerStars, Hawaiian Gardens Casino, became the third card club in the Golden State to be fined a large amount by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
Last week the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that Hawaiian Gardens had agreed to pay $2.8 million.
Over an investigation that stretched over several years the IRS found that the casino had violated the law “many” times. The Gardens allegedly failed to report large cash transactions, failed in many occasions to file suspicious activity reports and also to keep certain records required by law.
Some staff members at the casino apparently helped customers to structure their transactions to keep them below levels that would trigger a report. One employee who was disciplined for this in 2009 later turned up repeating the offense in 2013.
The casino also continued to do business with customers that it had identified as being suspicious when they declined to provide ID.
This is the third California card club to be hit by FinCEN this year. The first was the Oaks Card Club, which was fined $650,000, followed two months later by the Normandie Casino, which agreed to pay $2.3 million and who owners had their gaming licenses revoked.
