Illegal Internet Gambling Cafes in California

– Our exclusive interview with Leslie Lohse, Chairwoman of the California Tribal Business Alliance, about illegal Internet gambling cafes in the state and how they affect profits and the community. Filmed at the Las Vegas Global Gaming Expo in 2013.

For more information on illegal Internet Gambling Cafes please see the following stories, or visit the California Tribal Business Alliance –

Internet Sweepstakes (illegal gambling) Cafes:

In recent years, thousands of “Internet sweepstakes cafes” have sprung up in storefronts, gas stations and convenience stores in more than a dozen states. Carefully designed to take advantage of state sweepstakes laws and to avoid state antigambling laws and gambling licensing restrictions, Internet sweepstakes cafes are estimated to earn more than $10 billion a year with games that closely mimic the experience of traditional slot and video poker machines. The cafes advertise and sell a product — usually Internet time or long-distance telephone minutes — that the gambler does not actually want. Along with that unwanted product, the customer receives a supposed bonus of “entries” in the Internet sweepstakes. With those entries, the customer can participate in Internet-based games at the cafe’s specially-programmed personal computers. Based on a random allocation of winning and losing entries, the customer may or may not win cash prizes through those games. According to the cafes that are reaping unregulated profits, this elaborate masquerade is not gambling, but a sweepstakes. According to every appellate court that has decided a lawsuit involving similar games, it is incontestably gambling.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND LINKS ON ILLEGAL INTERNET GAMBLING CAFES –

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