Officials with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board issued a US$24,000 fine to the Hollywood Casino at Penn National Racecourse in Grantville for allowing several underage players to gamble at slot machines on the property during July and August. Although the incidents involved visitors over the age of eighteen, which is legal under state law, the minimum age to play casino games is twenty-one.
The fines stem from three incidents involving underage players at the facility. On July 4, 2009, a twenty-year-old male visitor was able to play on one of the casino’s slot machines for over an hour. A month later, a nineteen-year-old man played at a bank of slot machines for nearly twenty minutes. The most severe infraction came two weeks later, when an eighteen-year-old woman played the slots for well over two hours.
The facility’s owner, Mountainview Thoroughbred Racing, is not appealing the decision and has agreed to pay the fines. Since 2004, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has issued over US$200,000 in fines to casinos that have allowed underage players on the gaming floor. The expansion of gaming in the state, as well as nearby states like West Virginia and Ohio, has prompted outrage from anti-gambling groups concerned with underage players falling into the trap of gambling addiction.
A similar incident occurred in September at the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs in the town of Wilkes-Barre. From August 2008 to March 2009, state gaming investigators cited eleven incidences of underage players and four of underage visitors walking through the casino floor, with some of the visitors as young as fifteen years of age. Many of the underage players played slot machines for well over an hour before they were escorted off the property by casino security. Downs Racing L.P., the ownership group behind the casino, received fines totaling nearly US$100,000 for these violations.
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