PA Gaming Control Board Fines Another Casino for Underage Gambling

Casino News - January 28th, 2010 - Written By Glen

Over the past two years, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has had to issue a great number of fines to casinos within the state over underage gambling. In these two years, a total of $232,500 dollars in fines have been levied against several of the casinos throughout the state of Pennsylvania, which still holds gambling as a very young interstitial industry. On January 27th, a $16,000 dollar fine was levied against Rivers Casino.

A consent agreement had been reached between the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board and Holdings Acquisition Co. L.P., the proprietor of Rivers Casino, Pittsburgh. The Board had unanimously approved of the civil penalties that had stemmed from two occurrences of underage gambling in Rivers back in October and December of 2009.

On October 14th, 2009, a 15 year old female had accessed the gambling floor and had played on slot games for roughly 17 minutes before being ejected. The second incident, which occurred on December 13th, 2009, involved a 14 year old male who had managed to play on slot machines for nearly five minutes before security had noticed the infraction.

Pennsylvania, like nearly every other state in the nation, does not permit minors under the age of 21 to operate and play slot games. In Pennsylvania, those under 18 are not even permitted to enter the gaming floor.

The State of Pennsylvania has only recently added casinos to their list of legal forms of gambling, and in the short time that casinos have been operating, other changes have taken place, including the inception of table games. Many opponents to casino expansion from before the games were even legalized toted underage gambling risks amongst their reasons for being against the casinos.

Pennsylvania online casinos remain unfettered by the possibility of underage gambling, as they require many preventative identification checks in order to begin wagering.