PGCB continues to crack down on casinos, individuals over various failures

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) has issued a new round of penalties against individuals and licensed gaming properties in the Keystone State. In the latest enforcement action announced during a meeting of the PGCB, the regulator fined two properties for a total of $89,500.

The fines were issued against businesses in Gibson and Lake Ariel, where investigators found Video Gaming Terminals (VGTs) that were available to the public, the statement from the board read. Besides going after individual businesses, 10 individuals were also placed on the state’s Involuntary Exclusion Lists. Actions such as these to deny statewide gambling privileges serve as a reminder that adults are prohibited from leaving minors unattended in the parking lot or garage, a hotel, or other venues at a casino, since it creates a potentially unsafe and dangerous environment for the children, the PGCB noted. These lists are created to restrict the access of consumers of the legal gambling age to gambling products after they have been caught in various transgressions of state and regulatory laws. In the majority of the cases, parents or guardians had left children in the cars of casinos before being discovered by security, while the adults went in to play. In one such case, a female patron left her 7-year-old in a hotel room in Philadelphia for nearly four hours as she gambled at various table games. One male gambler left his children, aged six and eight, in a parking lot for one hour and 15 minutes while he gambled inside a casino. Another male gambler left a six-year-old in a vehicle in a parking lot for 19 minutes as he was gambling on slot machines. The PGCB has criticized these instances of neglect and placed the parties responsible on the exclusion lists. The PGCB continues to monitor the state and its gambling venues for breaches of regulatory rules, and puts a special focus on parents who neglect their children to gamble.