People seem to think the word “gangster” exclusively connotes “drug dealers who do drive by shootings.”
According to the story, as described, apparently:
1) There are multiple people involved in an organized and elaborate scheme to deliberately defraud strangers of large sums of money;
2) Said organization has actively colluded to create this racket;
3) Said racket includes rental of at least one property for a criminal purpose, hosting of illegal gambling, development of technology to perform a fraud, payment of scouts to identify and deliver victims, providing inducements to keep victims involved (alcohol, food, grooming, et al), payment of collaborators to enact and participate in that fraud, etc.
4) Perhaps most crucially, it also involves the extension of large amounts of unregulated credit, at times using electronic financial/banking systems, with the knowledge that their “end” of this credit system is backed by a fraud, and that the borrower will lose their loan with almost complete certainty.
(Note: It has not been mentioned what if any interest would have been charged had debts not been settled promptly, or what means would be used to collect if borrowers defaulted.)
Taken together, one can call these activities, racketeering, organized crime, gangsterism, or whatever descriptive term one prefers. Either way, such coordinated activity seems quite distinct from homeowners hosting unraked, unrigged private games for friends, in the eyes of the law as I understand it.
