Free Republic

Democrat Representative David Nangle was arrested by the FBI and IRS on a 28-count indictment that includes a wide variety of corruption charges. Some of those charges include, at this time, bank fraud, wire fraud, lying to a bank, and even filing false tax returns...

SIOUX CITY -- A Sioux City man has been charged with forgery after a Woodbury County Sheriff's deputy found 174 counterfeit $100 bills in his vehicle. The deputy found the fake bills after stopping a car occupied by Nicholas Thompson, 29, on Jan. 8 on Interstate 29. According to court documents, Thompson told the deputy he had won the money while gambling at WinnaVegas Casino in Sloan, Iowa. The deputy also found a piece of paper on which it appeared someone had attempted to print a $100 bill. Thompson also faces charges of possession with intent to deliver a controlled...

The biggest game of the NFL season is on the horizon, as the 49ers and Chiefs are set to battle for the right to be called champions on Feb. 2 at Hard Rock Stadium. While the betting line suggests that we should expect a close game, it's the props that offer a preview into how the big game could go. From fun angles like the length of the national anthem and whether the coin flip comes up head or tails, to key parts of the game like who scores first and last, and who's named MVP, there are over 1,000...

Give Mattress Mack credit: He doesn’t give up. Jim McIngvale, the Houston-based owner of Gallery Furniture who is better known as “Mattress Mack,” has been betting against the Kansas City Chiefs this postseason and paying dearly for it. He’s not done. BetMGM had been preparing Wednesday for a $1 million Super Bowl LIV bet on the San Francisco 49ers, and it came in. The bet was from McIngvale, according to The Action Network.

BetMGM didn’t want to move the Super Bowl LIV line. But money talks. And it was a lot of money that moved the betting line. Jeff Stoneback, director of trading operations for MGM Resorts International, said a bettor put $550,000 on the Chiefs as a 1-point favorite to win $500,000. And with that, MGM moved the line to the Chiefs being a 1.5-point favorite over the San Francisco 49ers. “That forced us to move it,” Stoneback said.

The early Super Bowl 54 odds indicate an even matchup between Chiefs and 49ers. Betonline.ag listed the Chiefs as a 1 1/2-point favorite on the strength of their AFC title game victory over the Titans, even though the 49ers put on a similarly dominant display against the Packers. Because the game is considered almost a pick 'em, there is also little difference in the moneylines; early straight-up bettors would need to wager $125 to win $100 on the Chiefs, while 49ers backers could get even money (plus-105) on their side. Separately, oddsmakers are showing respect for the respective offenses led...

MGM Resorts International is selling the Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand resorts and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip to a joint venture for about $2.5billion. The buyers include include private-equity and real estate company Blackstone Group and MGM Growth Properties LLC. MGM Resorts anticipates to make approximately $2.4billion in the deal.

The CEO of bet365, Denise Coates, gave herself the largest yearly compensation in business history. The private company’s filings, which were revealed by The Guardian, showed that Coates was paid a total package of $422 million from March 2018 to March 2019. Here’s a rundown of her compensation the past four years, during which she’s made $1.2 billion. Coates also owns slightly more than 50% of the company:

An Indian man is being investigated for gambling his wife away before assaulting her when she refused to go with the winner. The incident took place in the district of Banka in the north-eastern Indian state of Bihar when Binod Kumar Shah lost a bet who could not afford to pay, according to local media. To cover the debt, he allegedly offered his wife Chanda Devi to the other man.

Ohio State is good and Rutgers is bad. I’m not breaking any news here. But just how different the extremes are according to the betting market is staggering. Circa Sports in Nevada is the first sportsbook across the betting market to post odds for the college football Week 12 matchup between Ohio State and Rutgers, and boy these odds are a doozy. The Buckeyes opened as a staggering 50.5-point favorites against the Scarlet Knights at Circa Sportsbook in Las Vegas. According to our Bet Labs data, just 53 college football teams have closed as favorites of more than 50 points...

San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane is being sued by a Las Vegas casino for failing to repay $500,000 in credit markers after gambling between playoff games last April. Court documents obtained by the Daily Mail claim that Kane, 28, received the eight markers from The Cosmopolitan valued between $20,000 and $100,000 on or around April 15, when the Sharks were in town for Games 3 and 4 of their first-round series with the Vegas Golden Knights. Kane has not repaid those markers, according to the court filing. The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is also seeking a repayment of legal...

Dive Brief: Illinois State Sen. Martin Sandoval has resigned from his position as chair of the State Senate's Transportation Committee amid a federal fraud and corruption investigation related to state construction work, the Associated Press reported. The Democratic senator is still listed as a member of the committee, however, as of Oct. 15. The move came after the details of a federal search warrant revealed that the FBI last month combed Sandoval's offices and home for information related to architect Cesar Santoy; Santoy's architecture firm, Studio ARQ; red-light camera program company SafeSpeed; lobbyists; construction companies; and employees of the Illinois...

Gamblers wagered a record-breaking $445 million on sports in New Jersey in September, the largest monthly total in the state since legal sports betting began in June 2018. Tuesday's release of figures came as the rapidly growing New Jersey sports betting market challenges Nevada for nationwide leadership of the industry. The two states have toggled back and forth in recent months in terms of who takes in more sports bets, but Nevada still has the highest monthly totals, including nearly $600 million in March, the largest monthly amount in U.S. history.

The Colts' odds of winning the Super Bowl this season plummeted at sportsbooks after quarterback Andrew Luck announced his retirement on Saturday night. PointsBet moved Indianapolis's Super Bowl odds from 12/1 to 50/1, while the Colts' win total shifted from 10 to six. Additionally, PointsBet moved the Colts from favorites to win the AFC South to the worst odds to finish first in the division. The Colts' +600 division odds are behind the Texans at +140, Jaguars at +225 and Titans at +325.

U.S. casino operator Eldorado Resorts Opens a New Window. has agreed to buy Caesars Entertainment Opens a New Window. in a $17.3 billion cash-and-stock deal, including debt, the companies said on Monday. Eldorado will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Caesars for a total value of $12.75 per share, consisting of $8.40 per share in cash consideration and 0.0899 shares of Eldorado common stock for each Caesars share of common stock.

Baseball legend Pete Rose took a shot at his former teammate and Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench on Thursday during an appearance on “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” Rose fired back after Bench refused to budge from his view that the former Cincinnati Reds star should be excluded from the Baseball Hall of Fame for gambling on the sport in 1989. “It don't bother me but you know Johnny Bench is one guy who should thank God I was born,” Rose told host Brian Kilmeade. “Because he never would have made the Hall of Fame if I wasn't born.” Kilmeade...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Federal and local law enforcement agencies raided a series of car lots and homes in connection with a money laundering investigation involving a convicted Palestinian terrorist. Family members of the suspect had previously been tied to a network of underground casinos, officials say. On Thursday morning, federal agents along with investigators with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office carried out a series of raids at a home in a luxurious neighborhood and at two car lots owned by George Z. Rafidi.

Although there are now twelve (twelve!) already-declared candidates opposing Donald Trump in 2020, the nation’s gambling gurus are still heavily favoring him for the win in the next election. In fact, as the Washington Examiner reported Wednesday, the entry of Bernie Sanders as #12 in the race didn’t even budge the numbers. In the latest batch of odds, released just after Bernie’s announcement, Trump is the overwhelming 3-2 favorite for reelection, writes the Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist Paul Bedard, who spoke with the sportsbook manager at BetOnline.ag, Dave Mason.

The Super Bowl is a spectacle. Sure, on the field, the game looks pretty normal. It’s still two teams trying to outmaneuver each other for 60 minutes. Away from the field, though, everything is taken to an extreme level. That doesn’t just include the pregame ceremonies, halftime show or the week of craziness leading up to the game, it also extends into the gambling world.

Growing up in Tunica at the height of its casino boom, Roosevelt Hall felt his community had been dealt a winning hand. Lavish monuments to gaming — a gleaming high-rise tower, an Irish medieval castle, an art deco movie house — rose up amid the cotton and rice fields, flooding the impoverished Mississippi Delta county with tourists, money and jobs. But the 38-year-old bartender is increasingly hedging his bets on the future. Nearly five years ago, Hall lost his job when the county’s largest gambling complex, Harrah’s, closed due to a glut in the market. After securing another position at...