WANNA BET?

“It may say so on the books, but it ain’t really against the law to be a bookie.”

-former Texas Department of Public Safety

undercover investigator



YOU MAY HAVE seen ol’ Tom slugging down a scotch and water the last time you made one of those late-afternoon pit stops at your favorite bar while you waited for the traffic to clear. Sitting on a stool at the bar, he was the portly one with the furrowed brow, the swept-back gray hair, the long silver sideburns and the matching moustache, which rested just above his crooked front teeth.

Tom’s probably never met a stranger. If you ever belly up to the bar next to him, he’ll have you charmed in no time-he’s armed with a stockpile of jokes that can rival the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But after a few drinks, his vulnerability will start to show as he laughs about his ex-wives, countless battles with the IRS and crying the day he turned 40.

During his college days, Tom was a top-notch real estate and insurance student. A one-time MENSA candidate, Tom dabbled in real estate and insurance and even worked a short stint in city government. But these days, he seems at his best hanging out in places with lighting far more subdued than a library or a high-rise office building. And up until a year ago, nightclubs and restaurants were as important to Tom’s business as a calculator is to a CPA. For three years, Tom was a bookie.

During those years, Tom whiled away dozens of afternoons in bars meeting potential bettors (called “players” in the bookies’ vernacular). By the time Tom went into semi-retirement more than a year ago, he and his partner had an active list of 150 players who bet on horse racing, football, baseball and basketball games. Tom claims to have made nearly $100,000 a year-counting all the free drinks-each of the three years he made book. Even though he and his partner limited bets to $1,000 per contest, Tom says the two accepted bets totaling between $500,000 and $600,000 each week. Although he stopped booking last year because his financial backer experienced money problems, Tom is considering starting up again this fall when Dallas gets football fever. “I’m a sucker for the gals, for drinking and the other nice things in life that some people call problems. For me, the extra money I make booking is one way to overcome them. I do it mostly for the money, but I also find it kind of exciting.”

In some ways, Tom is not your typical Dallas bookie. Not all bookies have 150 players; most have fewer (as few as 50 players is considered a pretty healthy bookmak-ing operation). Tom is probably better educated than most bookies, many of whom are high school dropouts. And Tom is probably a bit more brash than those bookies who worry about being caught by the police. (One nervous bookmaker, who was raided last fall, had his apartment windows reinforced with sheets of 1-inch plywood, his door braced with several 2-by-4s fastened to a stairway, had his bets recorded on water-soluble paper and even had a voltage regulator wired to his phone to detect wiretaps.)

But in one way, Tom is just like most Dallas bookies: Although gambling promotion is a third-degree felony in Texas, Tom has never been arrested for bookmaking. And even though a bookmaker can receive a two- to 10-year sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections, Tom has never seen the inside of a jail cell. That seems to be the norm in Dallas County, where bookies rarely go to jail-even when they are arrested and convicted. In fact, Sgt. John T. Williams of the Greater Dallas Organized Crime Task Force who has worked bookies for more than 20 years, says he can only remember one Dallas bookmaker ever being sent to the state penitentiary.

Odds like those are the reason Tom says he’s never lost any sleep worrying that the police might show up at his doorstep with a search warrant. “If you’re going to be in business, you’ve got to hang your shingle out,” Tom says. “Anybody who makes book in Dallas knows that the police know they’re booking. The police know the bookies. They just don’t care. Oh, every once in a while, they bust a few bookies when it comes metro [squad] budget time. In fact, there are a ton of policemen who are bettors. I had two on my list.”

Apparently, the biggest reason bookies operate in the open in Dallas is because law-enforcement agencies are spending time on what they believe are more important things. Bookmaking is low on the priority list for local, state and federal law enforcers. The last time the Organized Crime Task Force conducted a major investigation on bookies was in 1982, when a DPS intelligence agent and an informant went undercover for six months, penetrating a number of mid-level bookmaking operations. Today, pressure from the upper echelons of the police department have switched the priorities of the metro squad to mostly narcotics and car-theft cases. And most young investigators these days have little interest in chasing bookies; those who show any interest quickly become frustrated as they see their cases go up in smoke when judges throw out search warrants and prosecutors make plea-bargain deals that result in probated sentences.

Simultaneously, the FBI has turned its attention away from bookmaking operations and is heavily concentrating on narcotics trafficking and other white-collar crimes. The last time the FBI showed any strong interest in Dallas bookies was during the late Seventies, when an extensive series of court-authorized wiretaps resulted in the bust of a major organization and sent a few big-time bookies to the federal pen. That organization was referred to in a 1979 memo written by a federal Organized Crime Task Force as “the largest in the nation. Electronic surveillance over 10 days showed that the operation handled $1.3 million in wagers during that period.”

Ironically, bookmaking is not a violation of federal law unless the operation is comprised of five or more persons who do business across state lines. But if a bookie accepts bets on athletic contests, the IRS wants to know. Each year, according to federal requirements, a bookie must purchase a wagering tax stamp (a declaration that a person is an admitted gambler) for $500 a year; and fill out IRS Form 730 to report the total dollar value of the bets he has accepted. A bookie must also pay a 2 percent tax on his total wagers each month. Even so, many bookies do not purchase the tax stamp because, during the Sixties, IRS agents were known to reveal the names of tax stamp holders to other law-enforcement agencies. New laws, however, make it illegal to disclose tax stamp information to any person or law-enforcement agency-laws that IRS agents claim they strictly obey. As one IRS agent puts it: “A bookie may go to prison for a year if he gets caught, but if I disclose the fact that he has a tax stamp, I can get 10 years. Still, most bookies don’t trust the government; they think there’s some way we’re going to get them.”

Even when local and state law-enforcement agencies make cases on bookmakers, gambling paraphernalia such as betting slips, line sheets and settlement sheets seized by police officers often cannot be entered as evidence because a judge has found the search warrant to be faulty (often, because an informant has been judged unreliable). Faulty search warrants are responsible for an overwhelming number of dismissed gambling cases, even those cases in which a police officer and his confidential informant might have placed a bet with the accused bookie. Equally frustrating to police officers is watching prosecutors with crowded court dockets plea bargain away those cases the cops believe are strong enough to send the bookmakers to jail. Prosecutors say that juries and judges tend to be sympathetic to bookies and issue very light sentences, even when the accused bookmakers are judged guilty of committing felony gambling violations.

“I don’t think we have so much a problem getting bookies tried,” says Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. “We’re having trouble getting the sentences. We tried a bookie just last week, and he was found guilty of felony bookmaking. But the jury only gave him seven days in jail and a $100 fine.”

Wade says most people don’t realize that some Dallas bookies lay-off their bets (see box, this page) with organized crime figures and get their daily line from Mafia operatives in Las Vegas, Florida, Chicago and Minneapolis. “It’s hard to get through to juries the fact that a little bookmaker in Dallas can’t operate without being connected to the syndicate,” Wade says. “The last figures I read four or five years ago estimated that about $10 million is bet on sporting contests each week in Dallas. Where do you think that $10 million came from? There may be people on the jury who made a bet last week.”

“It’s a frustrating business to enforce gambling statutes in Dallas County,” says Set. Williams. “One of our biggest problems has been in the area of prosecution, not to mention the sentences by district court judges that have been extremely lenient. The community is apathetic. It doesn’t understand that there is a problem. The people making bets with bookies are the type of people that make the community go. They’re advertising executives, insurance men, car dealers, lawyers, doctors and all kinds of businessmen. For some reason, they protect their bookmaker like they would their insurance agent.”

Houston police claim they are experiencing the same frustrations as Dallas police in sending bookies to the penitentiary. But for the past decade, Houston has funded a special gambling unit to attack the problem head-on. At present, eight full- time officers are assigned to work exclusively on Houston bookmaking cases.

“There’s probably not a jury in the world that’s going to put a first-time bookie in the penitentiary,” says investigator Don Smith, one of the officers. “The average person doesn’t understand the evils of bookmaking. We’re finding that new bookies are getting into other activities, such as narcotics and fencing stolen goods, while the old-time bookies stick solely to bookmaking.

“We’re probably lucky if we can get a probated sentence on a bookie the first time around. But in Houston, gambling felony cases are not reduced [to misdemeanors] unless there is a very good reason. And we don’t have many problems with search warrants being thrown out because our warrants are drawn up by a district attorney in our special crimes section.”

DALLAS POLICE ESTIMATE that there are roughly 1,500 men like Tom in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, ranging from the small-time “hip-pocket” bookie (who may accept $50 bets from three or four friends) to larger bookmaking operations ($5,000 minimum bets) with links to Las Vegas. A confidential memo sent in 1983 by the head of the Greater Dallas Organized Crime Task Force to one of Wade’s prosecutors recommended harsh sentences for 27 suspected bookmakers. It claimed that a six-month undercover investigation “proved” Dallas bookies were “linked to known Mafia interests in the Las Vegas area.” The memo called bookmaking a “very big problem” in Dallas and reported that an undercover agent had found that bookies are involved in fencing stolen property, directly affiliated with cocaine trafficking and prostitution and constitute a “multi-million-dollar criminal business that involves embezzlement, fraud and other forms of white-collar crime.”

Such accusations draw snickers from Tom, who says that he’s never met a member of the Mafia or laid-off a bet to anybody in Vegas. Tom says he knows quite a few bookies, and not one of them has a contact in Las Vegas. They don’t need any, he says, because an enterprising Dallas bookie can make money on his own. Bookmakers can now get the line on athletic contests through sports services in Las Vegas or New York via a toll-free phone number. Gone are the days when bookies gathered in dark bars to get the line from the big bookie in town who had access to the wire services that were owned by the Mafia. The majority of Dallas bookies are independents who either hold their bets or lay them off to other Dallas bookies, according to a federal law-enforcement source knowledgeable about bookmaking in Dallas.



CHANGING OPERATIONAL modes have given way to changing community attitudes toward bookies. In fact, the chances are good that one of your friends knows or even places bets with a bookie. What’s more, bookies like Tom actually believe they are performing a community service. “A guy can get more excited about a game when he’s got some money on one of the teams,” he says. “Nobody could really say it’s wrong. Everybody knows Jimmy the Greek is a bookie, and he’s on national TV. It’s kin-da like Prohibition. I’ll tell you what, more gambling probably goes on here in Dallas than Las Vegas. In fact, a gambler could bet more here on a football game than he could in Vegas.”

But the trouble with bookies, Sgt. Williams says, is that some don’t limit their criminal activity to just bookmaking. To understand the evils of bookmaking, Williams says, one must first understand the system, which he describes as an inverted pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the smalltime bookmakers with only a few bettors, and at the top are the big bookies with multimillion-dollar businesses. Since bettors typically tend to bet more for one team than another in a sporting contest, the bookie ideally tries to even out his books by laying-off, or making large bets, to another bookie higher up the pyramid with better financial resources. That way, it doesn’t matter which team wins, since the bookie will collect the 10 percent “juice” from all the bettors who lose. (Anyone who places a bet with a bookie agrees to pay $110 on a $100 bet if he loses. If he wins, he only wins the $100.) It’s the lay-off system, says Williams, that requires some Dallas bookies to have organized crime contacts in Las Vegas for such large bets of, say, $50,000 or more.

Sgt. Williams claims that such criminal connections surfaced during the six-month undercover investigation coordinated by the task force, but officers were even more surprised to find that some bookies were involved in other types of crime, as well. The Texas Department of Public Safety officer who worked the 1982 undercover operation claims that he and his confidential informant ran into an array of criminal activity that ranged from narcotics trafficking to arms smuggling. In one such instance, the officer, who requested anonymity, received a phone call from a guy named Vito in New York City. Vito, who had heard of the officer from a Dallas bookie, was interested in buying 1,000 M-16s from the undercover officer, who was known to the bookie as an arms smuggler. Vito wanted to trade five kilos of cocaine for the guns. The undercover officer told him to sit tight, and he would send an associate in New York to pick up the cocaine and deliver the guns. The associate who picked up the cocaine was a New York City-based investigator who also put the handcuffs on Vito. In all, during the six-month investigation, the undercover officer said he and his informant were involved in negotiations for such deals as the purchase of 25 Cobra jet helicopters, the sale of 10,000 .45-caliber automatic pistols, the sale of stolen automobiles and jewelry and the purchase of various types of drugs.

However, the most valuable result of the undercover operation was the insight police gained into bookmaking by penetrating several relatively large Dallas operations. Posing as an arms dealer who drove a brown Lincoln Town Car with Nevada license plates, the undercover officer and his informant became trusted bettors in several Dallas bookmaking operations. The two bet as much as $90,000 one weekend with some 18 Dallas bookies; more than $200,000 was bet during another week on various athletic contests. “When we began the investigation, our goal was to get 20 bookies in six months,” the undercover investigator says, “but we only had $3,500 to place bets. We stretched our money by betting one team to win with one bookie and the opponent with another bookie.” In the end, the two had run up gambling debts of roughly $140,000- money that will never be collected by any of the bookies who were busted.



IT WAS SATURDAY, November 13, 1982, around 12:30 p.m.-just before most college football games were about to begin (the pros were out on strike at the time)- when six teams of four or five officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Organized Crime Task Force, the Internal Revenue Service and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office brought the investigation to a close. Armed with search warrants, the officers surprised bookmaking operations at nine different locations-seven in Dallas County, one in Lewisville, and another in Tanglewood. One of the bookies, who was barricaded in a Dallas apartment, managed to destroy all his betting slips, which investigators believed were made on water-soluble paper (known as “rice” or “flash” paper). At an office building in Mesquite, police discovered that calls were forwarded to another location in East Texas. Another bookie, surprised at an Irving apartment, attempted to stuff money and betting slips inside his underwear as officers broke down his door with a sledgehammer; when the officers made him remove his clothing, the evidence fell to the floor.

The undercover investigation netted an impressive list of suspected bookmakers, some with operations called “mid-level” by police. It included Homer Lee Miller Jr., a 42-year-old man who was convicted in 1977 on federal bookmaking charges and received a five-year prison sentence and $20,000 fine; James Collin Cole, the 50-year-old operator of the Inn of The Tower (a private club in Preston Towers) and the Dallas branch manager for Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe; 43-year-old Benny Wayne Campo, a man with three prior state convictions dating back to 1971, but who has never been sent to the penitentiary; 37-year-old Ronald Gerald Adley, a barber who owns Country Club Park Barbers in East Dallas; and Pete James Vouras, 47, the owner of the Chateau II restaurant and the only man in the group not actually indicted by the grand jury.

The case of Lewis Jennings Radford, a 51-year-old self-employed carpet salesman who was arrested in the bookmaking dragnet, is a good example of how justice is meted out to a bookmaker. Radford was one of the 27 men arrested in December 1982. He was indicted for felony gambling charges. At the time of his arrest, Radford was running Midway Carpets Co. out of his home near White Rock Lake. Radford, according to a pre-sentence report filed by probation officer William P. Nowlin, is the kind of guy who is too busy to do the things he likes to do, such as fishing, hunting and keeping up the lawn and garden. Radford was born and raised in Dallas, dropped out of Spence Jr. High in the ninth grade in 1946 and calls himself an inactive Baptist. Although Nowlin said that Radford and his wife of 22 years were “somewhat secretive in regard to their financial situation,” they did indicate the couple’s comfortable home was a “gift,” that their two cars were paid for and that their only monthly expenses included utilities, food, taxes, attorney’s fees and a $300-a-month fine for a prior federal gambling violation.

Radford said that the income from his carpet business ranged from $400 to $800 a month. “Mr. Radford stated that he entered the gambling business to supplement his income,” Nowlin says. “He said he had been involved off and on for approximately one year prior to his involvement in this offense. He related that the professional football strike disrupted his gambling business and he subsequently began booking bets on college football games.”

The report also notes that Radford had eight prior arrests, seven times for DWI and once on a burglary charge. He was convicted twice on DWI charges and in March 1983 was fined $2,500 by U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders on federal charges related to gambling.

After studying Radford’s background, Nowlin recommended that he be put on probation. “This writer thinks that his involvement in the gambling business has been too costly a venture for continued involvement for the subject,” Nowlin wrote. “It appears he has lost more money on his bets than he made.” The district attorney’s first plea bargain offer on the felony charge was for a 10-year probated sentence and a $5,000 fine. In the end, Radford plea bargained for a Class-A misdemeanor and spent 30 days on a Dallas County work release program while he was employed as a salesman at a local carpet company.

But much of the hard work by investigators on the Dallas dragnet went unrewarded. Of the 27 men arrested in December 1982, Campo is the only one who has been sentenced to serve time in the Texas Department of Corrections. (Campo, however, has since appealed the case and has not yet left for Huntsville (see box, page 61). Cole, originally the target of the undercover investigation, received a one-year probated sentence and a $2,000 fine on a misdemeanor charge; Adley received a three-year probated sentence; Miller’s case was dismissed. One of the suspected bookies was found innocent after a trial, and two cases are pending. In the remaining cases, suspected bookies were either given probation or their cases were dismissed or quashed. “They were really doing some talking out there,” says Sgt. Williams. “It’s just a shame the cases didn’t get prosecuted better.”

Perhaps the best indication of the state of bookmaking in Dallas came a few years ago, when a well-known Dallas bookmaker stood in a courtroom before a federal judge shortly after being indicted on bookmaking charges. “Judge, I was noticing this indictment, and it says here ’the United States vs. me,’” the bookie said to the judge. “That seems a little out of line, so I was wondering if you might be willing to spot me six points.”

WHY MAKING BOOK DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A GAMBLE



NOT ALL BOOKIES are true gamblers. In fact, a textbook bookie can win every time if he has a good adding machine and a “lay-off source.” It’s called “working off the juice” (the 10 percent surcharge a bettor pays when he loses a wager), and here’s how it works:

Imagine Dallas goes to the Super Bowl next year. (Come on, stretch that imagination.) Say they’re playing the Los Angeles Raiders for all the marbles. You’re a Dallas bookie and your players have bet a total of $100,000 on Dallas and $30,000 on LA. Naturally, if the Cowboys win, you’re headed for that bookie bankruptcy court in the sky, but if the Raiders are victorious, you can get that new Mercedes you’ve been wanting.

But if you’re not greedy and would rather go for the sure thing, you’ll place a $70,000 “lay-off bet on Dallas with another bookie who has the bucks to handle such substantial action. Now, no matter which team wins, you’re looking at a $3,000 profit. How’s that? If Dallas wins, you’ll pay off your bettors $100,000 and collect $33,000 ($3,000 in juice) from the losers. Your layoff source will have to pay you $70,000. If Los Angeles wins, you pay your bettors $30,000 and your lay-off source $77,000 ($7,000 in juice). But your bettors will have to pay you a total of $110,000 ($10,000 in juice).

The trouble most bookies have is yielding to the temptation to “hold” all their bets and go for broke, instead of laying-off to balance the books.

-E.M.

A SHORT BOOKIE QUIZ

TO TEST YOUR knowledge of real-life bookies, respond true or false to the following statements:



1) The best way to find a bookie is to ask a police officer.

False. Police know the bookies, but placing a bet with a bookmaker is technically a Class-C misdemeanor. The best way to find a bookie is to ask a friend at the office or get to know a bartender.



2) You can always recognize a bookie by the Rolex watch and the leather jacket he’s wearing.

False. He may be a cop. If not, then he’s a bookie. Don’t ever tell a guy wearing a three-piece suit or a Polo shirt and Topsiders that you want the Packers and three.



3) Bookies are not lazy people.

True. Sure, bookies don’t put in their 9-to-5 like you or me, but it’s not like they don’t work hard. The average bookie works weekends and is busy the rest of the week recruiting bettors and paying off and collecting from the ones he already has. In fact, FBI agents who monitored wiretaps on bookies in the late Seventies complained that they put in some of the longest hours in their careers.



4) Bookies are born, not made.

False. Many bookies catch the fever at the office or their neighborhood bar, covering a few bets from friends. Soon it begins to dawn on the “hip-pocket” bookie that he could make more money at home over the phone than he can by putting in his 40 at the office. One such bookie, who police have been trying to nab since 1980, began his criminal career while working as a mail clerk at a small company in Irving.



5) If you forget to pay your bookie on Tuesday, Jack-the-Leg-Breaker will be waiting atyour doorstep Wednesday morning.

False. Real-life bookies don’t like violence. Not that all of them are nice guys, but any bookie knows a player is capable of phoning the police if threats on his life are made. One undercover officer who spent six months playing with the bookies in 1982 says he ran up debts as high as $6,000 and was never threatened. Most bookies will just drop a bettor who refuses to settle up.



6) If you refer a friend to a bookie, you’reresponsible for his bad debts.

True. Unless you make some other arrangement, it might be a good idea to turn only your more solvent friends on to your bookie. If you tell a bookie your friend is okay and your friend stiffs him, get ready to debit your own checking account.



7) To be a bookie, you’ve got to have anuncle who’s a Mafia guy.

False. It wouldn’t hurt, but most law-enforcement officers say the majority of Dallas bookies are independents. That’s not to say, however, that some of the bigger bookies don’t have lay-off sources in Las Vegas. “Organized crime?” says one Dallas bookie. “Picture this: My partner and I are manning two phones every Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to noon during the football season. About 150 people are calling us first to get the line and again to place their bets. We can barely get down the bets, much less figure out how much is bet on each team. So how are we going to be able to figure out how much we are going to lay-off to another bookie?”



8) Housewives are sometimes solid book-making informants.

True. Police are sometimes turned on tobookies by upset housewives who are calling with the phone number of their husband’s bookies, says Dallas Police Sgt. JohnT. Williams of the Greater Dallas OrganizedCrime Task Force. That usually happenswhen the other half dips into the savings account or misses the house payment to support a gambling habit. -E.M.

…AND ONE WHO’S HEADED FOR THEJOINT



THE ILL-FATED bet for bookie Benny Wayne Campo was placed on September 12, 1982, when Fred Collins, bettor No. 302 on Campo’s books, put $700 on the Baltimore Colts. Campo won the bet (New England beat the Colts 24-13), but it may have cost him his freedom. What the burly bookmaker didn’t know at the time was that the man known to him as Fred Collins was in fact an undercover agent for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Campo was convicted last January on felony bookmaking charges. Although he remains free on an appeal bond, Criminal District Court Judge James B. Zimmermann sentenced him to two years in the Texas Department of Corrections. If Campo does head south, he would be the first bookie from Dallas County in recent memory to go to the state penitentiary.

Police have been chasing Campo for more than a decade. They say that the 6-foot, 205-pound bookie has a lay-off source in Las Vegas, holds a federal wagering tax stamp and over the years has built a formidable bookmaking business in Dallas. An entry in his 1982 court case file reads, “Campo has made threats he will kill the undercover officer and informant before his trial.”

Campo was born in Hugo, Oklahoma. He has a high school education and served in the Army from 1958 to 1966. At the time of his 1982 arrest, he told police he earned $2,000 a month as an employee of Action Apartment Locators. Before that, Campo listed his employment at a maid service.

Campo’s first conviction on felony book-making charges was in June 1971, when a jury sentenced him to a one-year probation and a $500 fine. In June 1974, police again filed gambling promotion charges on Campo, but he ended up pleading guilty only to a misdemeanor charge and paying a $200 fine. The following summer, police raided Campo’s Garland apartment, seizing bet slips, racing forms, settle-up sheets, sporting event schedules, line sheets and an adding machine. In December 1975, however, a state judge threw out the search warrant after Campo’s attorney alleged police had not established that their informant’s tip was reliable.

Ironically, in 1982, Campo told the same undercover officer who busted him that he was “not worried about state cases.”

-E.M.