Lodge Card Club Raided / Grand Jury does not indict any Lodge employees

Your point was that the Lodge didn't have proper AML measures in place, that their lawyers were inept, and that this was a open and shut case against the lodge because you had held this belief for 4+ years. As far as I can tell you were wrong about everything, but maybe you got 1 out of 3 if we are being very generous

Yes, your posts were limited to this extent when you were posting that the sky was falling as you had predicted four years ago. Sure, there was no over reach by you. This result is exactly what you were predicting. Sure.

Nigel Mansell at the Canadian GP 1991 comes to mind.

You pulled this exact same rhetoric last time I called you out. Just a generally off-putting way to be

I am happy to be wrong in any direction that gets people their jobs back and gets players their money back.

My issue was never rooting for disaster. My issue was pointing out that when this model blows up, regular employees are the ones who get hurt first. There are a lot of people who moved across the country to work there.

And that is also why I thought Doug should have honored the promise immediately or not made it at all.

Not because I think he is acting in bad faith, but because life happens.

A personal promise that sounds rock solid today can look very different a year from now if circumstances change through no fault of his own.

That could be anything from legal complications to personal financial setbacks to just ordinary life events that affect liquidity. Once that happens, the community is left relying on a promise that may no longer be realistically performable.

That is why I have always thought the safest promise is immediate action.

If you are not in a position to pay people back now, then making a broad public assurance about paying them back later creates a risk that the promise ends up being worth a lot less than people assumed.

Seems to me that if the Lodge was in violation of any statutes, then so were the rest of the cardrooms in Texas. Got to wonder what they did to piss off the TABC. Looks like Bush Jr. was right; the constitution is just a piece of paper. We are not protected from unreasonable seizures by the government.

TABC couldn’t even get a grand jury to tie up funds for a trial where they only had to show with a 50+1% standard that the funds were the proceeds of or used in the commission of a crime. What does that tell you about how strong their case was?

You also claimed that they were potentially not following AML statutes. Obviously this isn’t the case or if it is they were not able to establish that they could even possibly establish that to a preponderance of the evidence.

That’s just the stuff I felt like reading from you. Your 4 year prediction was way off base and you had the audacity to say “I told you so” with absolutely zero basis other than you assuming everything the charging agency said was correct.

Civil asset forfeiture is a notoriously controversial mechanism the state uses to seize assets prior to having to prove any crime has taken place, despite the allegation being a criminal allegation but with no requirement to charge someone with a crime (which would be criminal asset forfeiture).

When was this mythical civil grand jury ruling?

Even if the funds are returned, TABC can proceed to a) pull the license, b) get Lodge declared a nudciance and c) close them for a year.

I am not predicting this. As I have no clue what TABC, TX or the county really want to see happen. But I will take the over on Lodge being open with a liquor license in a couple or few weeks.

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Here is the Austin Statesman reporting

As the saying goes, you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich because only the prosecution gets to submit evidence to the Grand Jury, the members of the Grand Jury don't get to hear any arguments or any evidence from the defendants. Edit: I missed that Polk said in this case the DA allowed the Lodge to present a defense to the Grand Jury.

Still, to fail to get indictments returned from a Grand Jury is a humiliating failure on the TABC's part, its almost unheard of because the bar for "probable cause" is far lower than the bar they need to hurdle to get a conviction.

So again, as I said all along, this case smelt like harassment pure and simple. I said this when it was reported that one of the claims was that deposits were much larger than expected from actual time charges/food/liquor sales, which demonstrated they had no clue how casino/poker room operations and accounting worked. Specifically I pointed out that players depositing to their banks or simply holding large denomination chips could easily lead to millions in extra bank deposits. I'm just surprised the grand jury figured it out too, usually they are led around by their noses.

So will the TABC try to yank their liquor license or try to get them closed as a nuisance? Anything can happen but I highly doubt the TABC wants even more bad publicity or for more people to hear about their aggressive incompetence in harassing local businesses. When they tried to close those rooms in Dallas and it turned out that there were shakedowns going on by lobbyists trying to get paid to "protect" the rooms from their partners in the county governance, all of the cases disappeared over-night to avoid bringing even more attention to their incompetence and corruption and AFAIK no further harassment occured.

And it turns out THAT WASN'T "exactly what happened". Neither you or the TABC produced any evidence that the Lodge wasn't following regulations or that it was "money laundering".

My point, going back months, is that you didn't know what you were talking about. No one ever demonstrated they weren't filing SARs or CTRs, you just assumed they weren't.

I think you are narrowing the scope way too much.

SARs and CTRs are not the only things that matter in an AML framework....

The Treasury Department’s own money laundering risk assessment for casinos and card clubs talks about a much broader set of risks, including chip walking, minimal play, structuring, money mules, and even patrons’ collusion on bets.

So when I raised concerns, I was not limiting that to whether I personally had proof that one specific SAR or CTR was missed.

My point was that this type of environment carries a much wider set of AML and financial crime risks than the very narrow box you are trying to force this into. Treasury and FinCEN both frame casino and card-club AML compliance as being about internal controls, suspicious activity detection, recordkeeping, training, and broader compliance systems, not just whether a couple of forms got filed.

And yes, people on 2+2 had been warning for years that some of the games at the Lodge were ripe for collusion. Those posts were linked in this thread.

That is not proof of wrongdoing, but it is also not irrelevant when Treasury itself specifically identifies collusion on bets as one of the ways card clubs can be used to launder money.... and from a pure risk-management standpoint, that is part of the concern too.

If a bad actor sees a card-club owner publicly reassuring everyone that people will be made whole, that can make an already high-risk environment look even more attractive to the wrong people.

Personally, this is another reason why it's nonsensical for Doug to make promises about making everyone whole... Either do it day one, or don't make the promise at all.

I have no insight into what TABC's angle was and I am not saying that proves anything happened here.

I am saying that this is a much broader AML discussion than just whether you can point to one missing SAR or CTR.

I know you probably did not read the Treasury PDF I posted.... and I do not really blame you because it is long, but here is the link since that is the framework I was referring to this whole time:

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/2...

I understand its a lot more complex than a couple of forms, but you haven't provided a shred of evidence for anything at all, and neither did the TABC apparently or they wouldn't have gotten their teeth kicked in by the Grand Jury.

Nice pivot to another claim you've got zero evidence for. Do you even have any case law where any poker room got prosecuted for money laundering specifically due to game collusion?

Are you an idiot? You think Doug should have made a multi-million dollar payment "day one" when he didn't even know if the charges would stick?

Now you are just spinning desperately trying to find a justification for your posts, as his promises don't change a single thing about this case or its risks or the willingness of bad actors to do anything.

Again, you don't have any case law around your claims or evidence that the Lodge violated any significant regulations, and you never did. The TABC could not even demonstrate the lowest possible level of evidence, PROBABLE CAUSE, that they were doing wrong.

which is why I send $ to the Institute for Justice, they fight civil forfeiture cases.

My favorite charity is the Human Fund

This wasn’t an action by TABC. This was the county DA. TABC doesn’t pursue criminal actions. They are not prosecutors.

The actions you claim happened in Dallas would be crimes. If there was evidence why is it not being pursued?

The Dallas case I am familiar with was resolved in an appeals court. The court ruled the judge could not replace the zoning board decision with his own unless the board decision had no, none, nada, basis. Had nothing to do with officials protecting anyone.

But again, the post I responded to claimed TABC failed to get a positive ruling from a grand jury. But TABC never takes anything to grand jury. That is a DA or AG. Also civil actions don’t go to grand jury either

You seem to think TABC was involved in Dallas case that went to trial. z they were not.

TABC also did not present to this grand jury. This wasn’t Williamson county DA. TABC regulates, investigates,, etc but doesn’t prosecute. They have no jurisdiction in criminal court though they can be called as witnesses

The money laundering charges were likely included solely to give Feds access. If something came up on AML or similar, the Feds would move that to federal court and take over. Yes, states can prosecute some AML issue, but that is normally left to the Feds. When Feds decided nothing for them those charges were dropped.

Btw, again, TABC was not party to the grand jury except as potentially a witness. Nor were they a party to the Dallas case.

If TABC chooses to go forward with revoking license or nuisance claims, there will be no jury, grand or other. It will be a judge considering the law

Same

So when does Doug get his 2 million dollars back? How can they raid Doug and not give the money baCk? Seems like theft to me.

Doug stated the money and equipment that was seized will all be returned and that they're trying to do a grand reopening within the next few weeks if possible

Words, words, words. Yes, obviously, the TABC doesn’t prosecute cases. So what? They were intimately involved in this entire sting. They’re all part of the same law enforcement effort, as you almost certainly know. Do you think TABC and the politically ambitious DA weren’t working hand in glove over the entire two-year investigation? They almost certainly planned the entire operation together and prepared for the grand jury together. It’s utter humiliation for both the TABC and the DA.

Rather than repeatedly point out that the agency COULD revoke the liquor license, why don’t you tell us how likely you think that is to happen.

Do you expect TABC to continue to harass a business providing 150 jobs or whatever it is in the local economy after the humiliation of the GJ? Do you expect them to continue to poke the bear after a GJ made up of citizens of the county told them to piss off? Do you think the politically ambitious DA in that same county—the same DA they’ll need to work hand in glove with on future TABC investigations—will support additional moves against the club? Do you think a judge, they’re elected in Texas, will support further harassment against the club and rule in favor of revoking the liquor license? I don’t.

How likely do you think it is that the TABC will take any additional actions against the Lodge?

Not in TX and too lazy to look up much Texas law but Fore has been pretty accurate in describing g the administrative remedies my states ABC would have. Again, did not look at Texas, but my state has some pretty easy procedures in place for civil forfeiture when criminal charges are pursued in a timely manner.

Our ABC went after a bunch of charity gambling events a few years back, made arrests, confiscated money, etc. the fourth one, they shut down a 30 year old church carnival and all hell broke loose. ABC agents fired and all charges were dropped against all defendants in a State AG press conference. ABC is like the police or really like a state highway patrol but the rumor going around was that the casinos wanted to snuff out the charity gambling because revenue was falling in the summer months.

Frankly, I was expecting cease and desist letters to all the other poker rooms with liquor licenses if the goal of the TABC was to make an example of the lodge and shut down poker gambling in Texas.