In jail for being in debt
 

or, more accurately, in jail for not showing up in court.

it's like saying you were jailed for speeding when what you did was ignore a ticket until a warrant was issued.

what's your point, golfer?

When it comes to Las Vegas, there is a such thing as debtor's prison. If you refuse to pay off your markers, the casinos can have you arrested. Here is how they get away with it: When you sign a marker, you are actually signing a check. If you don't pay off your marker, they can have you arrested for writing bad checks. And it doesn't matter what state you live in. Once the warrant for your arrest is issued in Las Vegas, it becomes a warrant that is good in every state. If you get pulled over in a state like Colorado (or any state), when the officer sees that there is a warrant out for your arrest in Las vegas, they will take you to jail.

I have two different friends that this happened to. The one guy is a dentist that lives in Colorado. He got arrested in Colorado. The other guy is a producer that lives here in Los Angeles and he got arrested in Los Angeles after a routine traffic stop.

I don't think there is any excuse for not paying off a debt, even to a casino. However, if the law is that you can't be arrested for a normal debt, then you shouldn't be arrested for a gambling debt.

because you wrote a bad check. which is a crime.

You are right and that is how the casinos get away with it. The casinos were smart by turning markers into checks. They actually ask you for your bank information and then put your bank account # on the top of your marker, thereby making the marker a check. In reality, the markers are rarely used as checks. Let's say you take a marker for $10,000 at a casino and you lose the money. The casino won't try to cash the marker. They will hang on to the marker until you pay back the $10,000. At most casinos you have 30 days to pay. If you don't pay after 30 days, then they will call you to find out what is going on. They will usually work with a person if he needs more time or needs to make a payment plan. But if the person simply refuses to pay, then the casino will use the marker as a check and will try to cash it. If there are insufficient funds, then they can have you arrested.

This is relatively new. It wasn't until some time in the 1980s that gambling debts became legally enforceable. If you would have lost $50,000 in Vegas back in 1980 and you refused to pay, there was nothing they could do. They had no legal recourse against you. This was a big problem for the casinos. There were too many people that didn't pay. The casinos were powerful enough to get the laws changed.

the Desert is full of people that didn't pay:eek:

":eek:"

i think your use of this is at least 35% of our issues.

That actually was the case at one time. But eventually most of the mobsters were run out of the casno business and the casinos realized that they were better off trying to get the money legally rather than by beating up or killing people.

That's not true. They send the marker to your bank after x amount of days. Many people allow this to happen for comp purposes so the Casinos think you lost the whole marker.

As I said, at most casinos you have 30 days to pay. If you don't pay after 30 days, they will call you. They will usually call you first before they send the marker to your bank. They will ask you if you want them to cash the marker or if you want to pay them another way.

Some people will tell the casino to send the marker to their bank if they have the money in their account and that was the account they were going to pay the money out of any way.

Comps don't have anything to do with it. The casinos keep track of your play. If I take out a $10,000 marker and I only lose $5,000, the casino is not going to think I lost $10,000. Even if I leave Las Vegas owing the casino $10,000, they will still know that I only lost $5,000. The way you pay them back will not have any effect on your comps. When the 30 days is up, you can pay them cash, you can write them a check, or you can tell them to deposit your marker. The casino is fine with any of those methods. You won't get better comps by having them deposit your marker, rather than by writing them a check out of another account or paying them cash.

I believe a man known as Ant may say different, if he was still alive.