Starting July 1, Florida’s new 5-member Florida Gaming Control Commission, established by the legislature in May 2021 and appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, will take over the duties of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. However, commissioners have only met a few times; their most recent meeting was the first with all five members.
During that meeting, commissioners instructed Executive Director Louis Trombetta to advertise for the position of director of gaming enforcement. The position will require 10 years of experience in law enforcement, including criminal investigations. Commissioner Chuck Drago said, “It’s going to be a big challenge for us and for the law enforcement director to get out in the state as quickly as possible and let these other law enforcement agencies know that they’ve got this expertise now. Many law enforcement agencies aren’t familiar enough with the gray market machines and so forth to really understand it and make the cases they need to make.”
So-called gray market games are a big concern, said Seminole Tribe lobbyist Marc Dunbar. The state has declared gray market electronic games to be illegal and denied licenses to operators, but unregulated operations continue to pop up.
Dunbar told commissioners, “We’ve had known organized crime, we’ve had shootings, we’ve had actually murders involved in the gray market industry in Florida. One of the things that’s tied law enforcement’s hands, local government’s hands and the Division of Parimutuel Wagering and state agencies’ hands is an entity that didn’t have that plenary authority.
Please communicate your existence to local elected officials and local law enforcement. It’s going to be important as they move forward looking at these kind of operations.”
