Today's NYT Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine/17GAMBLING.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position= August 17, 2003 Bookies in Exile By WILLIAM BERLIND Costa Rica is highly prized by the world's backpackers and sightseers for its unspoiled natural beauty, but it's easy to forget that when arriving in its grimy capital, San Jose. The newly remodeled airport is surrounded by chain hotels, freshly paved roads and shiny corporate plazas. After that it goes rapidly downhill. A dusty highway heading vaguely toward downtown takes you through the poorer suburbs of San Jose, packed with families in corrugated-tin-roof shacks. Above them, on the sides of the surrounding hills, Costa Rica's elite live behind high, fortified walls. The entire valley is blanketed with smog from auto fumes, brush fires and burned trash. This Costa Rica doesn't make for much of a postcard, but to a small group of men, Americans mostly, it is alluring, enchanting and brimming with possibilities for adventure. The men are bookmakers taking bets and dispensing winnings over the Internet, and Costa Rica has exactly what they need -- a government that welcomes new investment in almost whatever form it takes, a well-developed business environment that makes it possible get phone lines hooked up and computer equipment serviced and a sizable English-speaking population capable of manning the phones and helping customers place their bets. Legal prostitution, as well as a plethora of strip clubs, seedy casinos and bars festooned with Budweiser signs, round out the atmosphere. Betting operations are now among San Jose's most lucrative and visible enterprises, and their success has transformed the city. One prominent suburban landmark is an office building occupied by an outfit called BETonSPORTS.com. Throughout its nine floors, 1,500 Costa Ricans are employed (in mostly clerical positions) and offered amenities like on-site day care and classes to improve their English. Most of the bookmaking companies, though, are a good deal smaller and harder to see, tucked away in strip malls and shadowy side streets. The American proprietors are generally in their 30's and 40's, and for them, the Internet provides not only the means to escape the reach of American law, but also a chance to turn what had been the equivalent back home of small, local shops -- sustained by personalized attention and all the headaches that involves -- into booming, virtual superstores that can rake in action from all over the world. The experiences of these men in Costa Rica, as well as of those elsewhere in Central America and the Caribbean, started out as thrilling adventures in what seemed to them like Las Vegas in the 1950's. But as betting operations multiplied, the offshore business has become hotly competitive and complicated. Worse, in recent years lawmakers and ambitious prosecutors back in the States have been mounting ever more serious legal challenges. Returning home to a normal life now means facing the possibility of going to prison. And so, many of the bookmakers who started out so optimistically are finding themselves locked into an isolated way of life that with each passing day seems a worse bet. ....
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Duncan Frissell