Office pools common but nevertheless illegal

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

Sgt. Guy Nahale, head of the Honolulu Police Department gambling detail reports that "any time you wager something on the outcome of a future event, we consider that gambling." Illustration by Jon Orque • The Honolulu Advertiser Fast facts on office pools The word "pool" to describe a collective gambling endeavor came into use in the late 1600s. The French word, poule, in the slang of the time, also meant booty or plunder, as in soldiers carting off chickens (and women) after they'd sacked a village. This came to mean stakes won in a card game. Whether pools are illegal depends on the locale. An AT&T manager in New Jersey was arrested earlier this year for a Super Bowl office pool, but authorities were more concerned with the fact that he took a cut of the action, which they said brought his "take" to $3,000. In Illinois, the attorney general says he's not interested unless bookmakers are involved. The busiest time of the year for office pools seems to be "March Madness," with spring college basketball tournaments and Oscar pools. More than $600 billion is wagered on sports each year, and the NCAA basketball tournament has replaced the Super Bowl as the biggest event for betting in the United States.

Suddenly, the room started to rock and sway, and my first job in journalism was quickly beginning to look like my last. The editor who hired me just smiled, reached for his wallet, pulled out a fiver and inexplicably called out, "Six two!" Another person scrambled for paper and pen and yelled "Five nine!"

It took a while before this neophyte reporter realized they were starting a pool.

While in Hawai'i we won't be betting on how high on the Richter scale the most recent earthquake registers, there are baby birth dates to guess, Super Bowls to correctly predict and Oscar ballots to fill in, for thrills and profit.

All in good fun, yes?

"They're all, technically, illegal," reports Sgt. Guy Nahale, head of the Honolulu Police Department gambling detail.

"Any time you wager something on the outcome of a future event, we consider that gambling."

A game is considered a gamble if it includes three elements: consideration (paying to play), chance (no one has control of the outcome) and reward. Under Hawai'i law, Nahale said, if you have those three elements, you have a crime.

State Ethics Commission executive director Dan Mollway, who handles ethics inquiries from the state's 70,000 employees, says he knows pools are formed during football season. In 1996, he reported a flagrant problem to the attorney general's office: A manager used taxpayer time and computers to run illegal football betting pools and to produce documents for a golf tournament conducted by a private business. The ex-manager was not identified.

Mollway said if he gets a call from a government employee asking about such things, he forwards them directly to Honolulu police.

But Nahale rarely gets asked to bust office football pools.

If you ask private business folk in Hawai'i if they participate in office pools, the answer is no.

On the record, anyway.

Some are believable, like Alan Roche, a Xerox employee.

"I don't have money to gamble," said the father of three.

And one tends to believe Eric Haakenson, controller at This Week Publications, when he admits to playing fantasy football online — "no money," he adds, "just bragging rights."

Carey Higaki says he swore off gambling after dropping a wad o' cash in Las Vegas once.

"I can't take losing. I work too hard for my money," Higaki said as he headed into the Dole Cannery Home Depot. "I'm a poor loser, which means, poor, and I don't like to lose."

But two aloha-shirted men walking down Fort Street know office pools go on. They aren't about to tell a reporter if they themselves take part in office pools, nor will they rat out their friends. They will, however, point out the King Fort Magazine Shop, 1122 Fort St., which sells what owner Duane Hong calls "football newsletters."

In a town that doesn't allow gambling, Hong does a brisk business with these tip sheets from September through the date of the Super Bowl, in January.

Who, exactly, buys the newsletters, which can be used for everything from innocent office football pools with no payoff to the hard-core gambler's parlay sheets?

"People from all walks of life," Hong responds.

Police, lawyers, etc?

He smiles. "All walks of life."

Scott Ishikawa, a 21-year-old who works in a downtown law firm, said he has been offered the opportunity to bet on sports games.

"Everybody knows who around here does it," says Ishikawa, adding that his office is gambling-free.

City's deputy prosecuting attorney Rene Sonobe-Hong said people who gamble face a range of punishments, depending on a number of factors, such as the size of the winnings or how big the bet is. A misdemeanor conviction (possible for participating in an office pool) could bring up to a $2,000 fine and year in jail with a year probation.

A more substantial crime (like running a football pool that goes into the thousands of dollars while charging an administrative fee, for example) could rate as a Class C felony, which brings with it fines up to $10,000, up to five years in jail and five years' probation.

However, "We've never prosecuted a baby pool," she said.

And back to Nahale, who suspects that office betting is widespread. Asked if anyone at the HPD takes part in pools, he answered: "None that I know about, but ..." and started to laugh.

"In two years, never had a call in to report an office block pool," he said. "If they did, I'd go out to investigate."

In some cases, there are even corporate codes of conduct that outline gambling of any kind as verboten. Hawai'i's two largest banks, Bank of Hawaii and First Hawaiian, specifically address gambling on company premises (Bankoh) and "examples of dishonest acts," including illegal gambling (First Hawaiian).

"Certainly that's not appropriate for the work environment," said Bankoh's vice president of human resources, Neal Hocklander.

And while University of Hawai'i-Manoa business professor David Bess, who teaches business ethics, does note that in the post-Enron/WorldCom climate, "people are touchy" about ethical issues these days, he doesn't see many firms rushing to put that in their corporate ethics policies.

"To put things in a context, everybody is much more concerned about issues affecting viability of business, rather than betting $5 on whether it's a boy or girl," he said.

Contact Mary Kaye Ritz at 525-8035 or mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com.