More detail on Italian police raids

More detail has been released by prosecutors in Rome on Wednesday’s Italian police swoop on internet gambling individuals believed to be associated with organised crime groups (see previous report).

The Reuters news agency reports that prosecutors have confirmed the arrest of 11 persons for allegedly running an illegal online gaming business which garnered millions of Euros in bets every day, sometimes in collusion with the mafia.

Prosecutors named Luigi Tancredi, as head of the gambling ring, saying that he had been arrested on suspicion of running an international criminal group that favours the mafia.

Known as the “King of Slots”, Tancredi is alleged to have worked extensively in Italy’s legal gambling business in the past and had come under scrutiny in previous probes by courts in central and northern Italy, investigators said.

His business, run out of Romania through a server based in Tampa, Florida, operated an average of 12,000 virtual poker tables throughout Italy with Euro 11.5 million in bets per day, giving him a personal cut of more than 1 million Euros, prosecutors claim.

“A wiretap captured some mobsters commenting that this business was more profitable than drug trafficking,” Finance Police Colonel Alessandro Cavalli told local reporters Wednesday.

Police revealed that one of the men arrested had Euro 200,000 in cash in his home. More than Euro 10 million in assets, including real estate and corporate bank accounts, were seized in the police operation.

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