Online Gaming Ban
Endangers Costa Rican
Jobs
By Black Schmidt,
Special to The Miami
Herald
San José - Alina Trejos
used to live relatively
well, buying a car,
paying for college and
even taking a European
vacation on her salary
from a job taking bets
on American football. No
more.
A controversial U.S.
crackdown on the us$12
billion online gaming
industry has hit hard in
Costa Rica, where an
abundance of English
speakers and lax laws
once made it home to the
highest concentration of
Internet gambling
companies in the world -
nearly 200 - and earned
it the nickname of the
``Las Vegas of the
Internet.''
''The Golden Age is
definitely over,'' said
Nelson Rose, a professor
at Whittier College in
Southern California and
leading expert on
gambling laws.
At least 20 online
gambling companies with
operations here have
shut down or are
planning to flee to
places like Malta since
the United States began
going after sports books
two years ago, according
to Eduardo Agami,
president of an online
gambling trade
association in Costa
Rica.
''The companies have to
make a greater effort to
stay afloat,'' Agami
said. ``That's a
consequence of this
invasion-like attack on
the industry.''
Thousands here have been
laid off, and the
industry, already
surrounded by suspicions
of ties to organized
crime, is sliding
further underground as
profits are pinched.
''The books have marked
the youth of our time,''
said Trejos, a former
bet taker for the online
gambling giant
BetonSports. ``Suddenly,
there were young people
with cash.''
Occupying nine floors of
a San José office
building, the company
was once known as one of
San José's friendliest
employers. Costa Ricans
made more working there
than as lawyers and
pilots, according to
Trejos, who after four
months of unemployment
has found a lower-paying
job at computer giant
Hewlett-Packard's
outsourcing center.
BetonSports, which has
been accused of
operating illegal
gambling operations in
Florida, New York and
several places in the
Caribbean, closed all
its operations outside
of Costa Rica in June
under pressure from the
U.S. Department of
Justice. Its San José
offices closed late last
year.
In South Florida, the
president of a Miami
Gardens direct-mailing
firm, his two children
and a nephew were
indicted by federal
grand judy on charges of
aiding BetonSports.
''Illegal commercial
gambling across state
and international
borders is a crime,''
U.S. Attorney Catherine
Hanaway of the Eastern
District of Missouri
said in a statement when
the indictment was
unsealed last year.
The government said
BetonSports fraudulently
took bets from U.S.
residents by phone and
the Internet and failed
to pay excise taxes.
But Rose said firms like
BetonSports made
themselves targets by
attracting attention
with ad campaigns in the
United States that
prosecutors labeled
``false and
fraudulent.''
In a country where
nearly 1 in 5 people
live in poverty,
hundreds like Trejos are
now earning lower wages
because of the
industry's recession.
The BetonSports shutdown
sent ripples through the
local economy, rattling
businesses that once
thrived off of a
well-paid workforce of
sports-book employees.
Several other shops in
the San José mall where
BetonSports once had its
offices also have
closed. Mauricio Badilla,
who manages a shoe store
that was popular with
sports-book employees,
said his shop is ``at
the point of shutting
down.''
Sales dropped by 30
percent when the online
gaming giant closed last
year: ''We're trying to
recuperate business,''
Badilla said.
Former BetonSports
employee Leah Palasis,
who immigrated from
neighboring Nicaragua,
returned from vacation
last year to find
herself without a job.
After a lengthy search,
she was hired by a call
center but now earns
less than half the
$1,500 she used to make
monthly.
The extra income is not
all Palasis misses:
BetonSports also offered
employees private
insurance, a game room,
gym and tae kwon do
lessons, among other
perks.
''I mean, Jesus, we had
free day care,'' she
said.
Those perks are now
gone, along with a
severance pay that was
supposed to amount to
$20,000. ''Nobody's
getting paid,'' Palasis
said.
Money has gotten so
tight, Palasis recently
sent her daughter to
live with relatives in
Nicaragua because she
can no longer afford to
pay a baby sitter.
Since BetonSports closed
its San José offices,
nearly all 2,000 workers
have lost their jobs.
Many say they've been
denied promised
severance totaling $4
million.
The company's fugitive
kingpin and New York
native Gary Kaplan was
arrested in the
Dominican Republic and
extradited earlier this
year and the company
plead guilty to U.S.
charges of money
laundering and
racketeering.
In Washington,
meanwhile, Congress
passed a law last year
preventing U.S.
credit-card firms and
banks from processing
payments to offshore
online gambling
businesses. |
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