[youtalkfunny]

A few thoughts:

--The O in RICO stands for "Organizations". One guy with a phone and a pencil does not fall under "Corrupt Organizations".

--The police? Seriously? Do you think they care about someone engaged in illegal activity, claiming to be swindled by their partner in crime? No, placing a bet is not as illegal as accepting a bet. But the whole transaction depends upon illegal activity. Don't expect the police to help you collect anything.

--The bottom line on this is simple. The man is telling you, "I'm not paying. Now, what are you going to do about it?" You have a wife and family to support, and you don't need this guy's 80k to do that, but you DO need to stay out of jail to accomplish it. You have a clean criminal record, and you want to keep it that way. There's only one thing you can "do about it", and that's walk away.

Getting him arrested, or especially harming him or his property, do you absolutely no good at all. Too many cameras, too many lawyers.

You just learned an $80,000 lesson.

--Getting stiffed is part of the game. There's no avoiding it. All you can do is try to keep it down to a small part of the game.

"The Book on Bookies" was written by a retired illegal bookmaker. He says in his last year, he won over a million dollars from his players, but only collected 75% of that money. The rest, he got stiffed. He shrugged it off as an unavoidable expense, and decided to be happy with an annual gross of $750,000.

Again, you paid for an expensive lesson. Learn from it.