Running a raffle is a game of chance, and if the people doing it profit from it they themselves have a vested state in the outcome, running it as a business. Not to mention the issue of taxes, an unrecorded raffle could take in any amount of money, and Uncle Sam wants to make sure he gets his cut.
I worked Casino Security, but it was down here in Connecticut, for the Indian Casinos (which are two of the three largest in the world... #1 and #3 respectively, or they were when I worked there), I'm no expert on Nevada gaming policy, but I have some familiarity with it because a lot of people hired to set policies and procedures and help run things, especially early on when Mohegan Sun Opened, were veterans of Nevada or Atlantic City Casinos.
Any kind of gambling usually has to be overseen by a gaming comission when it's for profit, to make sure it's kosher, and also to make sure it's properly recorded for tax purposes and so on. Things were a little differant because while the Indians didn't pay taxes in a traditional sense, their negotiations with the state over zoning and such lead to them giving the State Of Connecticut a cut of the profits, so of course The State had people there to keep an eye on things. It could get really complicated where you had Tribal Comissioners watching for the Tribe, State guys watching for the state, and Security who are the representitives of the Casino itself (which is in part financed by non-tribal entities and it's own entity which the Tribe holds ownership of along with the people they borrowed money from for construction). Nevada is apparently less complicated due to less players, but has a similar situation where there are people who want to have their eyes on any kind of gambling taking place.
Raffles conducted entirely for charity tend to be a bit differant, because the person holding the raffle has no direct financial stake in it, since none of the proceeds go to them. Depending on where you are, there can still be requirements you annouce what your doing ahead of time though and get it approved, I don't know how this works in Nevada.
With something like this the big thing they are probably worried about is that the lottery will be a scam. Imagine a situation where in a totally unregulated lottery run for the profit of the people holding it, the item being put up is arranged to be "won" by a friend of theirs who just gives it back to them. After all with all the power in their hands, who is going to verify the validity of the random draw. They arrange for the shill to win, take the money of all the people who paid for a change, and then have a ton of money for nothing except for some time. Whether a percentage goes to charity in a situation like that is irrelevent.
With raffles and lotteries for charity, there is also the technicality that the money being bet is actually being donated as the primary purpose. The prize is just an incentive to donate as opposed to the purpose (allegedly). Thus there are less requirements to watch it because techically it shouldn't matter if the people running the raffle wind up keeping the item... In practice it would upset people, but the technicality inherant in the alleged intention creates differant standards.
I'm no expert, but have learned a little about this stuff. To be honest I'm kind of surprised they got nailed though, they must have done quite the advertising blitz to wind
up on the radar. Part of me wonders if they actually planned to run this as a scam and got ratted out, causing the authorities to take more notice than they otherwise would have. Especially seeing as these guys apparently saw that video game disc as being enough of a meal ticket to presumably fund a company, and that intention, especially with 33% going to charity, seems ambitious for what they actually had. I mean it's cool, but it's not THAT cool. If they were careful though I could see them doing something like using a shill to sell it multiple times, and maybe come up with money somewhere around the level they were expecting... but that would take a lot of luck.
This also raises another interesting question... do these discs have any identifying marks on them that proves what they are? When the game is released on the 6th is there any way to tell the "Space Edition" from say a regular copy that didn't get sent up on a balloon? I might have missed that if there was. If there isn't, I'm not sure if this has much value at all as a collectible because it won't be long before it becomes impossible to prove what it actually is.
