Illegal gambling teen arrested
Illegal gambling

A teenage girl has been arrested for illegal sports betting in Florida

A nineteen year old teenager from Florida has been arrested and jailed following charges brought against her that proved she was running an illegal gambling house and offering illegal sports bets to punters, recent casino gambling news has revealed.

The teen, Briana Rios was charged with bookmaking and running a gambling house offering games such as poker and Blackjack cards, as well as offering bets on NFL and NBA games, Broward County courtroom heard last week.

Miss. Rios had managed to run the operation between October and December of last year by using an offshore account, Transfer Xpress, that was raided and shut down several months ago. It has been speculated that Rios could have been earning up to $300,000 a year as part of the illegal betting operation, with bookies usually taking 10% of each wager.

Despite her defense attorney insisting that Miss. Rios may have just been a clerk in a larger operation, Judge John Hurley thought otherwise. In excerpts from the case, ex-boyfriend Jose Solis, also defending Miss. Rios stated that, “she’s young. She’s a little girl. She’s 19 years old. She didn’t know what she was doing at the moment.”

His defense of the teen fell apart however, with the judge ruling that “It looks like there were a lot of customers going in here. You even had allegedly had computers inside to help you place the bets. This doesn’t look like a small, penny ante operation. Seems like a pretty big operation.”

Despite the plea that Miss. Rios was only left in charge whilst a Dominican Republic man was away, she could not escape the prison. Neighbors of the shop reported that they had no idea that it was turning into an illegal bookies where punters could bet on sports, stating that as far as they could see, she was just a girl who was transferring money to some place else.

The bond for the jailed teenager was set to a staggering $40,000 and unsurprisingly she remained in jail on Friday night. The case has caused controversy in some areas due to age of the ‘ringleader’ and the circumstances surrounding her arrest and treatment.