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Columbus
Dispatch
DeWine
going after Internet cafes
By Alan
Johnson
Thursday
April 11, 2013
Armed
with
an appellate court ruling that Internet sweepstakes cafes are illegal
gambling,
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said he’s going after them statewide.
DeWine
said
yesterday that he’s tired of waiting for state lawmakers to act on
legislation
regulating or eliminating the 820 Internet cafe operations in the state.
“We
now
have a decision out of the 8th District Court of Appeals which says
these
places are illegal,” DeWine told The Dispatch. “We’re going to take
that and
run with it by enforcing Ohio law.”
DeWine
said
he will work with county prosecutors and law-enforcement officials
statewide to
take legal action against sweepstakes operators, but he wouldn’t say
when or
how.
Sweepstakes
cafes typically sell customers phone cards or Internet time in exchange
for a
chance to win cash prizes. The cafes, their owners and employees are
not
regulated in any way by state and local agencies. While the operators
and their
Statehouse lobbyists argue they are sweepstakes games and are not
gambling, the
8th District Appeals Court ruled differently on March 21.
A
three-judge appellate panel decided that three Cleveland Internet cafes
were
illegally operating like casinos…
Read
the
rest of the article at the Columbus Dispatch
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