Which isn’t to say illegal gambling doesn’t still take place.

Now the charm of getting a little money down on the Chiefs in a bar or barbershop is largely a thing of the past. He wants some cash money,” Jenkins explains. And if a person was unable to pay their gambling debts, the mob would lend them the money at a high interest rate.Īnd, says Jenkins, they would use the money to buy off politicians or cops when needed. The local Civella family, for example, used profits from illegal sports betting to fund drug deals. Jenkins says sports wagering was the mob’s cash cow or line of credit. “By and large, in the majority of major cities, especially from Kansas City east, the mob was going control the sports booking,” says Gary Jenkins, a former mob investigator with the Kansas City Police Department who now produces the podcast Gangland Wire. Before sports books with big screen TVs and phone apps that connect directly to a bank, bettors needed a “wise guy.” The Lottery expects the take to get bigger as promotional free plays and credits dry up and cash takes their place.Ĭash once was the only method of sports betting in most of America. “After the payment of player prizes and deductions for promotional play and the federal excise tax, net sports wagering revenue for the first 10 days was $233,351, of which the state’s share is $23,335,” Kansas Lottery executive director Stephen Durrell told state lawmakers last week.

While that may sound like a windfall for the state’s treasury, it is not. In the first 10 days of legal sports wagering in Kansas, people made almost $40 million in bets.

Wise guys gambling