A second woman has been arrested for forging signatures for an LVS-backed casino campaign in Florida. [Image: Shutterstock.com]
The case unfolds
Maria Guadalupe Bautista, a 24-year-old woman from Florida, is the second person to be arrested and charged with fraud in the lead-up to the November 2022 ballot. The case relates to a gambling campaign run by Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) in 2021. .
16 counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information
According to a statement from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Bautista faces 16 counts related to the fraudulent use of personal identification information.
She formed part of a political action committee (PAC) called “Florida Voter Officials”. The Political Action Committee, funded by US gaming giant LVS, tried to convince voters to allow card rooms in North Florida to become casinos by amending the state constitution. It would have allowed LVS to expand into the state.
Ultimately, the PAC failed to produce the desired results. Not only did she fail to obtain the required number of signatures for the ballot, the authorities discovered that the commission had forged many of the signatures she had already submitted.
Satisfying tactic
In all, the PAC collected 976 signatures for its campaign. County election supervisors across Florida determined that 477 of them were invalid because the signatures did not match.
The authorities discovered that the political action committee used the names of the deceased to make up the numbers. An election supervisor discovered the signature of a woman she knew at church who had been dead for five years.
Bautista supposedly filed 191 petitions that were deemed fraudulent. Investigators found that 16 of the forms she submitted contained fake signatures, two of which were from people who had already died.
Her fellow PAC member, Cassandra Baylor, 65, was responsible for many other matters. Baylor was arrested in June and also faces charges of criminal use of personal identification information. Authorities are investigating 19 other petitioners in addition to Bautista and Baylor.
Baylor earned about $11,000 from her work for PAC between October 2021 and January 2022, according to her arrest warrant. In all, LVS spent $73 million trying to get the amendment on the November 2022 ballot.
Desperate fight
At first, the LVS-backed committee tried to fight to keep the amendment alive in court by suing for more time. However, this effort was later dropped.
war on turf
In the end, the Battle of Florida proved to be a tough fight for LVS, which was noted at the time by Politico like “Grass War Games.” The Seminole tribe of Florida, which has a monopoly on casino gambling in the state, ran into immediate trouble with LVS’ attempts to move into the sector. She created the Stand Up for Florida committee to fight the LVS PAC, and quickly found herself in legal limbo.
The LVS PAC sued the Seminoles claiming that the group was trying to sabotage their efforts, using illegal methods such as intimidation to convince people not to support its amendment. In response, the Seminoles filed their own lawsuit a few months later, presenting their allegations of illegal conduct and fraud.
