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Police say they have Hyde Park restaurant's number

Police say food wasn't the main attraction at Cordon Bleu on River Street - it was the lottery they charge was being run out of a room in the back of the restaurant.

Restaurant owner Marie Ketty Sanon, though, says she was only collecting money to buy rice, beans, sugar and other staples for relatives of customers back in Haiti.

At a Boston Licensing Board hearing this morning, however, Sanon allowed as how numbers on a receipt seized by police and given to the board as evidence did, in fact, show numbers, although she was unable to explain just what the numbers represented.

BPD Lt. Eric Eversley told the board that District E-18 had gotten complaints about gambling at the restaurant, so he decided to get some lunch there on Aug. 20 to see what was up. He told the board he entered the restaurant around 12:15 p.m. and ordered a meal. He said he stayed until 1:30 p.m. and never saw another person order food and never even saw a printed menu.

What he did see, he said, was a fairly steady stream of men and women heading toward an office in the back. All went in, stayed for a minute or less, then left "without picking up food or drink." Some exited the room holding US currency or slips of white paper in their hands on exiting, he said.

He said the action suddenly ended when Sanon entered the restaurant, saw him and said something in Creole to the man in the back room.

Eversley said he returned around noon on Sept. 3. He saw the door to the office was open, and he walked in. The same man sat behind a desk, with several other people clustered around him. On the desk, Eversley said, was a Thinkpad laptop, an Epson ticket printer, piles of currency and "numerous betting slips' - and, he continued "betting instructions affixed to the wall."

"I formed the opinion that illegal gambling was occurring on the premises," and at that point summoned another detective from E-18 to help collect evidence, he said.

Sanon, however, denied anything illegal was going on, just people coming by to pay for staples to be delivered in Haiti.

Sanon said she's been in the US since she was 14 and would never do anything against this country.

"No one says you're doing something against the country, but you may be doing something against the law," board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer told her.

The board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take on Sanon's food-serving license. Eversley said Sanon and the main he found in the room were also scheduled for a hearing today in West Roxbury District Court before a clerk magistrate, to determine whether any criminal charges should be issued.

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Comments

They play the numbers from Haiti. The Dominicans and Puerto Ricans do the same.

http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/2008/04/18/gambling_raid_hits_5_businesses/

They caught a women walking out of Super Mario's with aprox $200,000 in cash under her baby in it stroller.

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What's the advantage of playing some questionably legal numbers game out of a restaurant vs playing the perfectly lawful Powerball, Mass millions, Mass numbers game...?

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Taxes, or avoiding them, I assume.

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Super Mario's sold/ sells fake nike's and the owner is/was not legal. So he sure as shit wasn't paying taxes.

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Glad to hear that there's no serious crime going on in Boston anymore, and the police have time to spend on nonsense like this.

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until someone realizes they have tons of cash on them and the place gets robbed and someone gets hurt.

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And that's why we don't allow any successful cash-only businesses of any kind in Boston.

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Hyde Park is working hard to improve its business district
The neighborhood needs legitimate businesses that are going to bring in shoppers and diners, not a bookie bringing in illegal gamblers.

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What is the real issue here? The immoral conduct of gambling? Or was it bad that it wasn't part of the state sanctioned Mass Lottery monopoly?

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You haven't been outside St. Greg's on a Sunday night. In the immortal words of Troy Brown; "BINGO!".

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Why doesn't the PD focus on homicides? Has there been any one linked to the four girls shot on Harlem st? These people are bothering no one, leave them alone and focus on the drug dealers and killers.

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The Boston PD's job is to focus on all crimes. It's been shown that crime rates skyrocket when law enforcement over looks the small stuff. It lets criminals feel emboldened, and in turn their crimes become more frequent and more violent.

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Except for the people it was bothering. From the post:

BPD Lt. Eric Eversley told the board that District E-18 had gotten complaints about gambling at the restaurant

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unless it had an adverse effect on the food, or the service?

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Gambling doesn't happen in a vacuum. People who are uninterested in the reality of their chances see it as a quick fix to their problems. This can be seen in an increase in petty theft and fencing stolen goods nearby to provide extra gambling money. Under-the-table gambling provides zero revenue to the agencies that have to deal with these issues (cops, social support programs, etc.) making it ultimately a drain on the neighborhood, and city in general.

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Gambling in Hyde Park, Menino is such a big fan of casinos/gambling he must have been angry they shut this down. Hopefully he can work with the police to reopen this gambling establishment, Im sure its not that hes for gambling in East Boston but not in his Hyde Park?!

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awkward phrasing & writing throughout by the author of this story.

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How would you improve the story?

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Cocktail waitresses

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More cowbell.

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Did anyone see Esther?

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I noticed that restaurant for the first time this morning on my way home from the Hyde Park YMCA. Seemed like a nifty little place. Maybe I should go in for lunch tomorrow.

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I really don't care if there is gambling in the back room, as long as the food in the front room is good. Has anyone here tried this place? Do you recommend it?

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Don't send cops, send IRS agents.

And good bid talking in Creole. I love it when foreign people come into this country and use their native tongue as code in the act of breaking our laws. These are the kind of people that totally deserve amnesty.

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BPD actually has Creole-speaking cops these days. I suspect if Lt. Eversley needed to know what they were saying, he could have easily gotten one down there.

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Eversley probably did speak Creole. He wouldn't have been put on this case if he didn't.

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How's your Algonquin?

Or are you just another foreigner using your native tongue?

PS - Our country doesn't have an official language. Neither does our state.

PPS - Unless you have evidence otherwise, she's been here since the age of 14, so my bet is she's a naturalized citizen and doesn't need amnesty since she counts the same as you...well, I give her more credit, actually, and she's a known numbers runner.

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Algonquin isn't a language spoken in this community in a business setting. I know there's no official language, thank you.

It's also not official to say "(expletive) you" to people in a polite setting. We still don't do it. It's about civility, not the letter of the law.

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My friendly neighborhood wiseguy ran an illegal lottery out of the friendly neighborhood bucket of blood right up until the moment the DEA also busted him for dealing coke and oxy out of the same bar. (I was there the night he had to clean out the register to pay off some schmo who hit the number. He was pissed; it was scary.) And he might have gotten away with it, too, if those meddling DEA kids hadn't bagged him doing a big wholesale coke deal out of his social club up the street the preceding summer!

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I commented to my wife on multiple occasions that the place was a front...very easy to realize when there are never anyone in there eating that a restaurant can't stay open for more than a few months....maybe someone should check out Las Vegas Sea Food and the restaurant next to Master MdGrath's in the same area.

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Hmmm..

Any relation to that chap that just ran for city council?

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Las Vegas Seafood, despite its name, looks like a very legit place to me: lots of food business and customers...I clean up their trash that blows into the church yard each week; haven't found any 20's or gambling chits yet!

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