Les Bernal

My name is Les Bernal, and I work at Stop Predatory Gambling. It's really based on trying to bring about a massive government reform in our nation, to educate people about what's happening with state governments across United States, promoting extreme forms of gambling in the name of funding public services. We talk about rising inequality today--the inability of people to get out of poverty. This is Exhibit A in that debate. These powerful gambling interests in partnership with a handful of public officials have really positioned casinos particularly as an answer to our future. And it's the ultimate gimmick. Whether you gamble or not, you end up suffering from all this.

The difference between commercialized gambling, which we refer to as predatory 00:01:00gambling, versus social gambling, which is if we have a friendly wager on an NCAA March Madness tournament is that there's no house involved. No one's taking a cut of that wager. But with commercialized gambling, there's a house involved. Over the long term, no matter what form of gambling it is, you're almost guaranteed to lose your money, especially the longer you do it. It's really a form of financial fraud. Our mission is to is to eliminate this huge financial fraud that's happening in our country, and it's really resulting in millions of Americans losing billions of dollars of personal wealth.

In 2018, the American people lost one hundred and $118 billion of personal wealth to government sanctioned gambling. It's incredible loss. Politicians 00:02:00often lament about their inability--they have so few levers to pull to change our society, to provide more opportunity and increased mobility out of poverty. By promoting things like casinos to the American people, what states have done and municipalities have done is taken a nation of small earners, people whose make small amounts of wages and, instead of encouraging people to save, instead of helping them become small savers, we've turned them into a nation of a habitual betters.

The greater Bethlehem region over the last 10 years has lost, in terms of personal wealth, more than $4 billion to the Sands Casino. That's four billion 00:03:00dollars of personal wealth that the citizens in that region have lost to that place. When people say, 'Oh, look, there's a few retail stores there,'--the economic impact of four billion dollars of spending over 10 years, and all you have is a handful of retail places? The people that win in the commercialized gambling business--it's only one group of folks. And those are the people that run that run the casinos. That's why they're all billionaires. The guy that built Sands Casino, Sheldon Adelson, is a multi-billionaire, wealthiest men in the world. At the end of the day, the people of Bethlehem, the state of Pennsylvania, they may have seen an infusion of money in the short term, but that's money that may have been taken out of the savings and the assets of everyday folks. So in the long term, whether you gamble or not, you have a lower standard of living in the greater Bethlehem area because of the introduction of this massive--what is a wealth vacuum at the Sands Casino.

I think a lot of public officials find that this is an easy way out. It's really hard to go out and do the kinds of things that it takes to improve your economy and to improve opportunity for everyday people. You got to work on building your schools up and provide a better education for folks. You've got to attract new businesses to start up in your region and then attract existing business to come in a region. That's hard work. There's no shortcuts. The key to success is just the day-after-day, doing the hard work it is to build a society, to build an economy.

These powerful corporate gambling interests, they position themselves in communities and in states around the country that are financially desperate. 'Oh, you've been in a recession for the last several years or you lost your industrial core? Guess what? We're your answer. We're going to come in and infuse your economy with all this mythical money and these ultimately low-paying jobs.' Mostly part time jobs that aren't the core of building an economy.

I like to use the analogy of a blanket sometimes when I talk about this business. And there's also several ways to talk about it. But the blanket analogy is useful because imagine if a big blanket factory was coming into 00:06:00Bethlehem, PA., and I want to go out and buy a blanket from them. I'd go out, I'd pay my 50 bucks and get my blanket, and I go home. It's employing people so there's a there's a multiplier impact to that. Everyone who goes can buy their blanket and go home with it. In the gambling business, the only way they profit--in order for me to take money home, everyone else has to lose. It's based on the misery of other people, the financial misery of other folks. If I walk home out of there with a little bit of cash in my pocket--more than I came with--that's because everyone else had to lose in order for me to win. So you're basing your economy on ultimately what is a vulture-like mentality that, 'I'm going to gain at your expense and expense of all my fellow community members.'

But the other way I like to talk about the gambling business, which makes it different than any other commodity including any other vice like tobacco and 00:07:00alcohol--what makes it different is it is a big con. It's a con. It's a form of financial fraud. When I go to buy a good drink of wine, I'm getting a glass wine in return. I go buy a book, I'm going to a book in return. With predatory gambling, with commercialized gambling, you're luring me into that casino with the false lure that I have a chance to win money. But the games that I'm playing--they are mathematically guaranteed that over the long term, I'm going to lose all my cash, that I going to get fleeced. It's a form of financial fraud that is illegal for anyone else to operate in the state.

The gambling interests will stand up, and they'll say, 'Well, most people gamble 00:08:00without a problem. Most people come into our casino and they have no issues.' They refer to them as casual gamblers. But they don't make any money from the casual gamblers. The money in the gambling business is made by the out of control player. Over the last 10 to 15 years, there's more than a dozen studies that show between 40 to 60 percent of gambling profits come from people who are the out of control player. Guess how much money comes from that so-called casual player? Roughly 75 percent of the people walking into a casino are so-called casual gamblers, and they go in a couple of times a year, maybe once every six months or something.They make up make up 35 percent of the folks coming in. They make up 4 percent of the revenues. They're irrelevant. The casual gambler is irrelevant to the casino revenue scheme. It's the out of control player. That's 00:09:00why when we walk into the casino they give you free booze. Every time you walk in, say you've been there a lot, they'll say, 'Great to see you. Haven't seen you in a while. Here is $50 worth of free slots play.' Constantly urging you to keep gambling. They know the longer you keep sitting at the slot machine or at the gambling table, 'The longer that we can get you to sit there, it's inevitable that you're going to lose all your cash.' Not just lose all the cash you came with--they want to get you to get up out of that seat and go hit the casino ATM and borrow. That's what they really want. They want you to keep chasing your losses. One of the biggest scandals in America today that's been so underreported is the relationship between casino ATMS and casinos.

The casual player is not standing up in the casino and going to the ATM. It's the people who are these hardcore players. They lost their cash. Now they're chasing the losses. The companies that own the casino ATMs--it's not like Bank 00:10:00of America, it's a specialized company called Global Cash Access--they sell all the names of the people who take money out of the casino ATM back to the casino. The casino then markets to these individuals so intensely because they know, 'If we can get Joanne back into the casino and we can keep her there for a couple hours, she's gonna blow through the money she came with and hit the ATM.' It's a cycle, and this is a government program. This is being done with the blessing of state governments.

The business model for regional casinos is based on the addicted and out of control gambler. More than half--40 to 60 percent of their profits come from the of control player. Someone doesn't automatically start out as an addicted 00:11:00gambler. Casinos cultivate that. One of the first ways they'll do it is give you free play to come into the building. You may have never gambled in your life, but in order to get access to that free play, they give you a consumer card, and you have to use the consumer card at the casino to get the free play. You walk in there, you put your consumer card into the machine, you blow through the fifty dollars-worth of free slots play. If you show the likelihood of somebody who plays super-fast or you show the likelihood of getting up and then hitting the casino ATM to take out cash, you are going to light up their computer screen at the casinos. 'This is a new this is a prospect for us. If we get this man or woman back into the building, we're going to just take them for all they're worth.' And so they develop a whole profile on you, what your predicted lifetime value is--that's the actual term that they use: predicted lifetime value--for the individuals that get these consumer cards. If they haven't seen you in a couple weeks, they'll send you more free play. 'Come on back down.' They'll 00:12:00assign an employee to call you. If you become a big loser for the casino, they assign a host, which is a great term because the word host in this instance is more like a parasite. They assign somebody to keep calling. 'Hey, Joanne, we haven't seen it in a couple of weeks. Come on back down. Here's a free hotel room. Here's free slots play. Here's a free dinner.' So you keep coming back over and over again. Constantly through the mail, through your inbox, and in your email or the telephone, calling you all the time recruiting. And then you come back. Then once you get hooked, once you're there, there's no clocks in the building. They're open 24 hours. People get into what's called the zone. Much has been written about paperless electronic gaming machines. People get into these machines, not so much even trying to win anymore, they're playing them to escape. You have a tough day at work. You have a difficult time at home with 00:13:00your family. You have a spouse that's sick, and you need to escape the pressures of everyday life. Guess what? I walk into that casino, they know my name. 'Hey, Les, we haven't seen in a while. It's great to have you here.' You sit down at your machine, and you escape. Not just for an hour. These people go into the zone. They play for hours, 10 hours, 24 hours straight. Encouraging people on these huge binges.

So when the casinos stand up and say, 'Oh, we don't know who the addictive player is'? You can you can be a 12 year old with this stuff. If someone's been at the casino gambling for 24 straight hours, you know something? They have a problem. That's the bulk of the revenue that towns, cities like Bethlehem are getting from the casino. It's coming from those addicted players. That's where these revenue streams are coming from.

There are dozens of examples across United States, and I'm just going to name one right now where communities at the time were financially desperate. They had issues. They had big properties that were vacant. Instead of welcoming a business that's going to make the region poorer and based on financial fraud, they went out and said, 'We said no. We're not going to build a casino here, and we're going to build our economy the only way to build an economy. Through hard work, retraining our workers, making our region a desirable place to live.'

A place like Omaha, Nebraska, for example, had a massive old racetrack, and the owners of the racetrack were saying, 'There's no way we're going to rebuild this property. You got to give us a casino here.' Ultimately, despite enormous amounts of lobbying, the city of Omaha rejected it. Now, a decade later, you 00:15:00have an incredible economic engine there with insurance companies, technology companies, universities based in this property that was once designated as a casino.

There is no simple way to success. It's about doing the work, real leadership, having a vision. Think about the Great Depression: you had millions of people out of work, the government was going bankrupt. Think of how easy it would have been for the leaders at that time to stand up and say, 'Hey, the only answer for us is to build casinos across the country.' Imagine. That's the equivalent. They didn't do that. They said, 'No, what we're going to do is we're going to challenge the American people to save. They went out and did this huge campaign to get the American people to buy bonds. What's the iconic image from that era? It's Rosie the Riveter with her biceps flexed. The message is, 'We can do it.' When was the last time that the leaders of the greater Bethlehem area said, 'Oh, 00:16:00we don't need gimmicks like a casino. We can do this by hard work and sacrifice and make it happen.' In the Great Depression, they put a millions of people to work. Now we look back in history, and all books are written about that generation, and what do they call them? They call them the Greatest Generation. Now, we have this generation of folks that it's all about financial fraud. 'I'm here to rip you off.'

Regardless of what your religious faith is--most faiths have a sense of loving your neighbor like yourself. Predatory gambling, bringing casinos into a region--it's the opposite of that ethic. It's, 'I love myself more than my neighbor because I'm going to rip you off.' It creates a culture of fraud and exploitation.