Online sports betting named in Gambino probe - 10 February 2008 - By Milly M.

Offshore internet gambling played a vital role in supporting the criminal enterprises of the Gambino family, US officials said, in the latest evidence of the connections between the industry and organised crime.

An illegal sports gambling operation was based on at least four websites run in Costa Rica, as well as toll-free telephone numbers and a network of wire rooms, traditional bookies and debt collectors, according to the Queens district attorney.

Websites such as betallsports.com and betoffshore.net allegedly helped net "Gambino organised crime family gambling" operation almost $10m in wagers over two years. The case is just one of a number of recent prosecutions that have connected the world of organised crime with online gambling.

"It's a moneymaker for organised crime," said Richard Brown, the Queens district attorney. "Illegal gambling has always been the bread-and-butter moneymaker for organised crime because of the huge profits that it generates, which can be used to fund other more insidious forms of criminal activity, such as labour racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and...loan sharking."

Twenty people were arrested over the alleged illegal gambling operation, as well as in relation to alleged prostitution and loan sharking crimes, on Thursday. Nicholas Corrozzo, a 67-year-old Mafia "captain", whose brother Joseph "Miserable" Corrozzo was the alleged consigliere to the Gambino family, ran the gambling business, according to Mr Brown.

Nicholas Corrozzo, also known as "The Little Guy" and "The Doctor", is separately charged with ordering the double murder of Robert Arena "to settle a beef" and Thomas Maranga in 1996, by the US attorney for the eastern district of New York and is still on the run.

In 1976 he attended the wake of Carlo Gambino, the founder of the New York Mafia family, according to court documents. Last year the Financial Times revealed that Betonsports, the publicly listed British online gambling company that went bust after being charged with illegal gambling and racketeering, had been linked by US prosecutors to a website that employed members of the Gambino family to collect debts.

The Bestlinesports.com website was one of a number of websites "belonging to or controlled by" Betonsports, according to an indictment from the US attorney inMissouri. "There's a connection between what's happening online and organised crime," said John Pistole, of the FBI. "La Cosa Nostra has business acumen: if there's a way to make money without resorting to violence they will."