'Bolita' busts in Port St. Lucie yield five arrests
PORT ST. LUCIE — Police last week executed search warrants at four businesses — and made five arrests — as part of an investigation into “Bolita,” an illegal gambling game, according to Port St. Lucie Police.
Acting Police Chief Richard Del Toro said Bolita from his understanding is “an illegal form of gambling that's operated in conjunction with the New York lotto pick three and pick four system that happens twice a day.” It’s not affiliated or regulated by New York and simply follows those numbers.
“These are legitimate businesses that are doing this, but they're operating this illegal scam,” Del Toro said. “It's unregulated, it's illegal. The payout amount is not guaranteed, and sometimes is being withheld by the store owners.”
Bolita in Spanish means “little ball.” A dictionary definition of bolita is “a game of chance having the character of a lottery in which a bag of small numbered balls is tossed about until only one remains or until one is grasped at random, the ball so selected being considered as bearing the winning number.”
It has a long history in Cuba and in parts of Florida, such as Tampa, in decades past, according to published reports.
The locations searched, Del Toro said, include:
Cale Marketplace in the 700 block of Northwest Airoso Boulevard
Malaika Caribbean Cuisine & Bakery in the 600 block of Southwest Port St. Lucie Boulevard
Frienz Mini Mart in the 900 block of Southwest Bayshore Boulevard
Balla Unisex Salon in the 1300 block of Southwest Bayshore Boulevard
Del Toro said police began investigating following an anonymous complaint. They got help from an undercover detective from a different jurisdiction.
“In the 25 years I've been here, this is the first time I've encountered this game, this sort of illegal gambling operation,” Del Toro said.
He said investigators determined each business operated a separate gambling operation that didn’t appear related to the others. About $10,000 in cash was seized.
It’s not the first time Bolita busts have occurred on the Treasure Coast, however.
In a 2010 case, Fort Pierce police and state officials searched seven locations and arrested 17 people following an investigation into Bolita.
Five of the locations searched by police and state officials were businesses and two were homes, a Fort Pierce police spokesperson said at the time.
In a 2011 case, the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office arrested seven men and one woman at what the agency said was an illegal numbers game being run from a secret room behind a Fort Pierce convenience store.
Then Sheriff Ken Mascara reported the Bolita gambling operation was headquartered behind a store in the 2400 block of Okeechobee Road.
Del Toro said police sometimes are unaware of things until others alert them.
“We're really happy that this information was brought forward,” he said. “If you’ve got four places that are doing this that are separate from each other, it's probably happening in other places, and we're going to look into it.”
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Will Greenlee is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow Will on X @OffTheBeatTweet or reach him by phone at 772-267-7926. E-mail him at will.greenlee@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Police raid 4 businesses in Port St. Lucie in 'Bolita' investigation
