Gets,

Here is a recent story in Palm Beach County Florida. As PB said they are many large scale operations in Miami/Dade County.

By Liz Balmaseda and Christine Stapleton

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH —

A multicity police sweep on illegal street lottery operators and ticket-holders Friday night nabbed 20 people on charges of running a lottery, possessing illegal lottery tickets and renting a house for gambling.

Delray Beach police executed search warrants and seized $21,000 in gambling proceeds from six businesses: the Lake Ida Supermarket; Giveness Caribe Restaurant; Fred Noel Jewelers; Francois Appliance; Degree Unisex Salon; and Store One.

In all, the searches left 20 people facing charges ranging from possession of illegal lottery tickets to renting a home for gambling activities, according to a Delray Beach police report. Those arrested include; Kesner Sama, 58, of Delray Beach; Jose Rafael Lopez, 34, of Boynton Beach; Josue Simeon, 23, of Delray Beach; Anniel St. Surin, 45, of Delray Beach; Rafael Tavarez, 23, of Palm Springs; Jose German Fernandez, 22, of Coral Springs; Luis Reyes, 35, of Lake Worth; Jean Robert Francois, 62, of Boynton Beach; Elton Mondesir, 43, of Pompano Beach; and Kendrick Carvajal, 29, of Oakland Park, who also was charged with marijuana possession.

The Palm Beach County sheriff’s Strategic Intelligence Section and Boynton Beach Police Department also searched four locations suspected of selling bolita tickets and made arrests at two places in West Palm Beach and one in Lantana.

In West Palm Beach, investigators searched the Island Music Center and Multi Services on North Military Trail south of Community Drive and seized $878. They arrested Dieunous Paul, 41, of suburban West Palm Beach, on felony charges of operating a lottery.

The sheriff's office also searched Discount Foods on North Congress Avenue south of Okeechobee Boulevard, where they confiscated $1,654 and arrested Joseph Theus, 65, of Lake Worth, on felony charges of running an illegal lottery.

In Lantana, deputies seized $2,144 at Beauvais Caribbean Restaurant on South Congress Avenue south of Lantana Road, arresting Jose Ramon Rodriguez, 60, of Boynton Beach on felony charges of operating an unlawful lottery.

In Boynton Beach, police arrested Daniel Rotefeuille, 61, and charged him with operating an illegal lottery and resisting an officer without violence. Dieroste Couyoute, 41; Frantz Pacius, 40; Alex Prosper, 32; Elvin Duran, 32; and Souvenir Dore, 43, all of Boynton Beach, also were charged with operating an illegal lottery.

Friday’s sweep and arrests in West Palm Beach and Lantana “stemmed from numerous complaints,” said Teri Barbera, sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Bolita — Spanish for “little ball” — games are common across the Caribbean. Historically, they involved taking bets on which number ball will be drawn from a bag. In Haiti, where bolita is known as borlette, the lottery game generates an estimated $1.5 billion.

But in this country, where the illegal lottery racket was rampant in Cuban immigrant communities in the mid-20th century, the underground bolita business had faded.

In fact, when authorities arrested Delray Beach resident Pierre Richard Clervil last year on charges that he was running a borlette operation from the back of a Caribbean grocery store, they charged him with a rarely used statute of setting up, promoting or conducting a lottery for money.

On Saturday morning, nearly one year after prosecutors were forced to drop those charges, Clervil was arrested again on the same charges.

Clervil, 32, escaped facing criminal charges last year after one of the key investigators on the case was arrested on charges unrelated to the case.

Despite a six-month investigation into the illegal lottery operation and a sweep that included three locations, prosecutors dropped the charges against Clervil after the arrest of city police narcotics investigator David Chin was charged with perjury and official misconduct, accused of lying about his relationship to a confidential informant.

That investigation led Delray Beach SWAT to raid Polo’s Market on Congress, where they found a secure back room that was walled off from the rest of the store by a black reinforced door. Inside the room they found a dry-erase board with winning lottery numbers, borlette receipts, tickets, two laptop computers and more than $1,000 in cash.

It’s not clear whether the raid that led to the nine arrests early Saturday took place in more than one location, or yielded evidence similar to last year’s sweep.

In Saturday’s sweep, Clervil was arrested on charges of establishing a gambling place, playing an illegal lottery and possessing an illegal lottery ticket.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/c...ne-on-il/nY5sm/