Although the Las Vegas Raiders haven’t officially set up shop in Sin City already they’ve got a problem: parking. The team has had to pony up an additional $50 million to buy land on which fans can park, tailgate, etc. And that still isn’t enough, according to the Las Vegas Sun. “For patrons 
coming to a game, we need about 9,500 spots,” said Raiders President Marc Badain. “For staff and support staff workers, we need about 2,500 spots. We’ve identified as many as 30,000 spots in the immediate vicinity, most of which are within walking distance. We have in our control 15,000 spots already.” That leaves them only … oh, 15,000 spots short. The team is currently dickering with landowners in the vicinity of Allegiant Stadium, hoping to buy or lease more blacktop.
“There’s still a few thousand spots west of the stadium that are up for grabs. There’s a lot of interest and desire there, so there’s the ability to capture a lot of those spots,” said Badain. And given the laws of supply and demand, the Malosos are almost certain to paying through their noses for that real 
estate. “Supply will significantly exceed demand for parking.” That’s a mighty big promise. Raider Nation may have to resign itself to leaving its cars several miles from the stadium, as in the case of a tailgating area at Warm Springs and I-15. It’s so far from Allegiant Stadium that shuttle service will be required to get fans to the game. The Raiders are also casting a covetous eye at casino parking garages along the Strip.
According to the Sun, “the Raiders are not yet counting on those being available on game days.” There’s an understatement. The casinos need those garages for their own purposes—and now I think we know why parking fees were imposed by MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment. It’s a win-win for them: Either collect money from parking-desperate Raiders fans or get it from people who actually want to stay at the resorts. With Raiders-owned parking spots going for $100-$200, Las Vegas-based fans will soon be doing the math on whether it pays to leave their vehicle at a casino or not.
* Although we tend to take a benign view of Canada, it’s the Wild Wild West of casino regulation. Even Nevada‘s often-toothless “gold standard” is tougher than what passes for oversight in British Columbia. That’s the inescapable conclusion from an internal investigation by the Canadian Mounties, obtained by Global News. The allegations are lengthy and deserve to be read in full. Some of the lowlights include:
- Children of deadbeat gamblers being kidnapped and held for ransom.
- Delinquent female gamblers being trafficked from as far away as Malaysia to Canada and forced into white slavery.
- “The magnitude and depth of money laundering in British Columbia are far worse than when we were first sworn in,” says one politician.
- British Columbia Lottery Corp. pressured government to shut down its investigative arm.
- Casino staff may have referred gamblers to known loan sharks.
- A known organized-crime figure was allowed to buy into a casino. The government official who signed off on this subsequently took a job with a casino firm. (All names have been redacted.)
- Nine underground casinos were to be found in a 12-block stretch of Kingsway Avenue.
- A gambler “was pistol-whipped and stabbed repeatedly while his abductors demanded a $30,000 debt repayment.”
- Loan shark—and registered casino employee—Rong Lilly Li was strangled by two other criminals.
- The owner of an online gambling house was shot to death.
- “Many investigations across the country have shown that members of organized crime also use casinos for loan-sharking and money laundering, and that some of these criminal elements have successfully infiltrated the industry.”
“[N]othing in this report comes as a surprise to me,” says one former law-enforcement official who used to keep tabs on the Big Circle Boys and other Triads from China, Macao and Hong Kong. “As long as people were making money, they didn’t report it.”
The guiltiest party might be then-Solicitor General Rich Coleman who, when presented with these allegations, took action … in the form of shutting down the Royal Canadian Mounted Police‘s relevant B.C. investigative unit. Who got to Coleman and how? That’s just one of the many troubling questions raised by the Global News report. Former Crown prosecutor Sandy Garossino says the revelation “is shocking to the conscience … I cannot imagine why there should not be an investigation into what were the circumstances of disbanding the [casino crime] unit.” We’d agree with that.
