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Attorney
General Mike DeWine
Total
of
667 Internet Cafes Operating in Ohio
DeWine
Renews Call for Regulation
(COLUMBUS,
Ohio)—Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine today announced that his office
received 667 affidavits from owners of internet cafes. The affidavits
were
required as part of Am. Sub. H.B. 386 which put a moratorium on any new
electronic sweepstakes parlors or internet cafés. All sweepstakes
establishments in existence and operating prior to the effective date
of the
legislation, which was June 11, 2012, were required to complete an
affidavit of
existence. The
deadline to submit the
affidavits to the Attorney General’s Office was July 11, 2012.
The number
reported today is more than twice as high as an earlier total of 280
tallied
statewide by the Attorney General’s Office staff in March 2012. In addition, the
data from the affidavits is
similar to the March study in that these cafes are primarily located
north of
Interstate I-70.
“These
internet cafes are multiplying at an alarming rate, and I again am
encouraging
the Ohio General Assembly to act swiftly to regulate them with the same
scrutiny as other forms of gaming in Ohio,” said Ohio Attorney General
Mike
DeWine. “Ohioans
currently have no way
of knowing that these games are what the cafes report them to be or if
they are
being completely ripped off by the owners.”
This huge
number of parlors is capable of generating hundreds of millions of
unregulated
cash. Since there
is no state
regulation, licensing or oversight, there is no way to determine who is
getting
the money, where the money is going, whether any of these operators are
felons,
or whether any other criminal activity is funded by these proceeds.
DeWine
first called for the regulation of internet cafes in March 2011 and has
backed
both House Bill 195 and Senate Bill 317 that are currently pending in
the Ohio
General Assembly. With
the advent of
“racinos” at racetracks and the new casinos that have opened in
Cleveland and
Toledo, many Ohioans may assume that all types of gambling are legal
and
regulated by the state. While
racinos
and casinos are, internet cafes are unregulated and likely illegal
forms of
gambling.
Statewide and regional maps, a summary, and
a detailed list of the internet cafe locations are available on the
Ohio
Attorney General’s website.
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