In the interest of blatantly pandering to the ADD generation serving the readers, the Express is hereby (re-)introducing a new blog feature, in which we drill our weekly feature down to 150 or fewer easily digestible words. Enjoy!
This week, intrepid reporter Anna McCarthy visits the rough and tumble world of bingo, where she introduces us to none other than Bob Casteel, the East Bay’s bingo kingpin. See, in November, the City of Berkeley cracked down on a bingo hall that had been making massive amounts of money, despite the fact that bingo’s legally supposed to be a nonprofit enterprise. But it looks like that the wrong guys took the fall, and the moneymaker here is Casteel, who’s allegedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the halls, but managed to emerge pretty much unscathed from the city’s crackdown. There’s also a nifty sidebar that looks into the recent rise of so-called internet cafes that actually exploit legal loopholes and serve as de-facto casinos. Three guesses as to one of the people profiting off those is.
