Feds Investigating Slot Machine Deal 

Some questions have been raised about the deal that was made for the Aqueduct slot machines. Some say that the only reason that Governor Paterson awarded the slot machines to the group was because of political reasons, not because they were the best group to take it over. Paterson has denied all wrongdoing, but now the Feds are sticking their noses in it as well. 

It seems that there are those that think that Paterson was trying to get the support of Rev. Floyd Flake and so he offered the deal to the Aqueduct Entertainment Group. Flake owns .06% of the AEG so by giving the contract to them they stand to make somewhere around $180 million annually off of the 4,500 slot machines that will be put in there. Senator Frank Padavan says that the deal “stinks to high heaven” and he is not the only one who is suspicious of the deal. 

The investigation is supposedly going to see if there was any kind of mail or wire fraud committed and if any laws were broken in the brokering of the deal. They are also going to investigate the bidding process to see if there was a better deal made – and if so why wasn’t it taken. They are also going to look into a private meeting that took place between Flake and the governor just two days before the decision was made as to who would get the slot machine contract. 

Flake has already come out saying that he was going to support Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in the upcoming governor race, and many are wondering if this slot machine deal was an attempt to get him to change his mind about his support. AEG maintains that they got the slot machine deal because they were the best one for the job. They said that they offered the best deal for “New York’s tax payers and the best plan for the residents of Queens.”