A court in Colombia has sentenced 15 unlicensed slot operators to four years in prison and hefty fines, heralding a new get-tough policy by the government to stamp out illegal gambling.
The jail time was meted out by a court in Chinchiná, which also sentenced an individual who was supposed to be monitoring illegal machines to two years in prison and a hefty fine.
Colombian law allows venues other than casinos to offer machine gaming under approved circumstances. But the rules have been abused to the point where unlicensed games constitute a whopping 20 percent of all gaming revenues. Authorities say there are more than 7,000 illegal machines games operating in the country. The capital of Bogota alone is estimated to be home to 2,000 such operations.
The national regulator, Coljuegos, says it has confiscated more than 11,000 illegal devices since 2014. So far his year, authorities have seized more than 6,000 devices.
