“A lot of people that we talked to, they said that there was a boom during COVID because people couldn’t really go anywhere. The Mexican Mafia originated within the California Department of Corrections. Illegal casinos have long been present in Los Angeles, but appeared to have a boom during COVID. The LA sheriff’s detective added that contraband cellphones are pervasive across the prison system in California, which allows for the mob bosses in prison to freely speak with gangsters on the outside. “You open a smoke shop, you’re selling gaming software or you have a machine, some is going to walk in there and say, ‘Hey, you can’t do this in our area without our permission, without our protection.’” “The way I see it, the Mexican Mafia is not much different than the Italian mob,” Velasquez told the outlet. A prison gang called the Mexican Mafia has been reportedly running illegal casinos throughout Los Angeles.

They are given part of the profits for allowing the gambling houses to operate in their territories of LA. Many of the members are incarcerated, yet benefit from the profits of the illegal casinos. The roughly 140-person Mexican Mafia is a prison mob syndicate that oversees street gangs in Southern California.

“All of these places, someone in the Mexican Mafia has their hand over it,” Velasquez told the LA Times. The gambling houses are also called “nets,” short for the internet cafes of the early 2000s, or “tap taps” and “slap houses” for the sound heard from outside the gambling rooms as players hit buttons and joysticks on the machines. Velasquez told Fox News Digital that through his investigations, he heard some of the gang members running the gambling operations were pulling in $80,000 a week - though that number has now fallen. The casitas can bring in tens of thousands of dollars per week, as people flock to the gambling playgrounds to operate electronic machines. You don’t know that it’s there till you know that it’s there,” he said.

Richard Velasquez, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, told the Los Angeles Times that casitas, Spanish for “little houses,” are “everywhere, to be honest with you.” Illegal casinos in Los Angeles are cropping up everywhere from warehouses to homes and are largely benefiting incarcerated members of a prison gang called the Mexican Mafia, authorities say. Mansion in Canada operated as 'high-end illegal casino,' police sayĭelaware Police Raid Home-Based Casino Dealing in Nudity, Illegal Gambling Illegal gambling operation bust nets 5 arrests, allegedly operated by NY crime family

Casinos los angeles