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Toledo
Blade
DeWine does double duty
A
sweepstakes parlor, or Internet café, gives away chances to win
prizes with the use of Internet access. Ohio has more than 800 such
mini-casinos.
They
also are popular in the South, where their owners have been
able to amass enough money to buy political influence. In Florida, an
influence-peddling scandal involving the cafés has led to calls for
their
abolition.
Defenders
say Internet cafés are benign businesses that create
jobs. Critics call them pernicious, claiming they exploit old and poor
people
and escape regulation. Profits from these places often seem to wind up
in the
hands of Ukrainian gangsters.
A
better question might be: Are Internet cafés legal? Ohio
Attorney General Mike DeWine says they are not. He has launched a
crusade
against the cafés, creating a special unit to work with state and local
police
to investigate and shut down these enterprises.
Mr.
DeWine says he is empowered by a recent state appeals court
ruling that held that some cafés are simply illegal gambling houses, or
fronts
for them.
“In
our office, we always believed these places were illegal,” he
says. “Now we’re armed with a court decision that makes that crystal
clear.”
Last
month, the Ohio House passed legislation that would cap
prizes at Internet cafés at $10 and outlaw cash giveaways. That would
probably
shut down most of the cafés. The state Senate is in no hurry to take up
the
bill…
Read
the rest of the article at the Toledo Blade
http://www.toledoblade.com/Editorials/2013/04/22/DeWine-does-double-duty.html
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