For a few months now, the casino company Spectacle Entertainment has been under investigation by the Indiana Gaming Commission. Now, the probe has grown even further, to include other individuals apart from the former lawmaker and executive of the company John Keeler.
Mr. Keeler was indicted in September for allegedly draining casino funds to a state senator’s congressional bid, which eventually failed. He occupied an executive role at Centaur Gaming at the time when the then-state Senator Brent Waltz’s US House campaign received some donations in 2015. The campaign in question coincided with Centaur’s efforts to get legislative approval to start offering live table games at a couple of horse-track casinos of the company – the ones situated in Anderson and Shelbyville.
Later, Centaur Gaming was sold by Mr. Keeler and other of the company’s executives to Caesar’s Entertainment. The executives then invested the received amount of $1.7 billion into a new company called Spectacle Entertainment. They joined efforts with Greg Gibson from Terre Haute and started to aggressively lobby state lawmakers for permission to establish new casino venues in Terre Haute and Gary.
Reportedly, Governor Eric Holcomb received free private flights from the company, which also hired a company held by an Indiana lawmaker for title work and arranged legal work for then-Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma.
Sara Gonso Tait, the executive director of the Indiana Gaming Commission, has now revealed that the investigation of the gambling regulatory body, which involved other matters in addition to the criminal issues that had been previously unveiled, is almost complete.
Indiana Gambling Regulator Held 29 Separate Interviews with Current and Former Licensees
The probe that is being carried out by the state’s gambling commission is separate from the federal criminal investigation and currently involves over 10 subjects.
Ms. Tait revealed that 29 separate interviews of both licensees and former licensees were held. Three persons rejected the interviews requested by the regulatory body, including individuals who had previously been licensed or were currently subject to licenses issued by the IGC.
The spokeswoman refused to reveal the names of any individuals who are being investigated at the moment, but in her statement she made a number of references to Rod Ratcliff, a popular figure in the casino sector of Indiana, who is also an ex-chief executive officer of Centaur Gaming and Spectacle Entertainment.
Mr. Ratcliff surprisingly stepped down from his position in Spectacle in June, only a few weeks after the state’s gambling regulatory body received information about alleged breaches of the Indiana Riverboat Gambling Act. To date, he is still an owner, the IGC shared. He is also one of the three individuals who have refused to take part in the Indiana Gaming Commission’s interview requests. The others were Adam Kallick, an ex-employee of Centaur Gaming who stayed at Caesar’s Entertainment after the company’s takeover, and Kyle Waggoner, who was the vice president of the hospitality unit at Indiana Grand in Shelbyville.
