SECOND TO THE ILLEGAL trade in drugs, gambling and its ancillary crimes are a major source of income for organized-crime operations, which often spill over into white-collar crime. Organized-crime enterprises, from La Cosa Nostra to the Yakuza, rely heavily on gambling as a core operation, producing revenue on an ongoing basis.

The gambling operations lead to other aspects of their enterprise, such as loan-sharking and extortion. Gambling is best described as the opportunity to wager on some action in anticipation of correctly selecting the winner and receiving compensation in return.

Illegal gambling may exist in many forms and formats but is described by the United States Government in Title 18, U.S.C. Sec. 1955 as a business that: 1) is a violation of the law in the state ...