Lady Lake, Florida: Rima Ray Seeks Dismissal of RICO Charges in Alleged $24M Gambling Case

Rima Ray owned a game room in Lady Lake. Prosecutors say it was an illegal casino, and that more than $24 million moved through accounts tied to it. Her lawyers say the state has taken a gambling case and dressed it up as organised crime.

In a 32-page motion, reported by Villages-News on September 20, they are asking a court in Sumter County to throw out the racketeering charge and three counts of money laundering. The report does not describe a ruling.

One crime, or a pattern?

Their case starts with what racketeering law is meant for. It goes after patterns — people who commit crimes again and again, in organised ways. Running one game room, the defence says, is a single continuous activity, not a string of separate crimes.

On the money-laundering counts, they say nothing was hidden. They also argue those counts stand or fall with the racketeering charge, because laundering needs an underlying felony behind it.

Ray still faces charges of keeping a gambling house and possessing slot machines. Those would remain even if the motion works, the report says. And these are the defence’s positions, not findings by the court.

Where the statutes draw the line

Section 895.02 defines a “pattern of racketeering activity” as at least two incidents sharing “the same or similar intents, results, accomplices, victims, or methods of commission.” They need not be different kinds of crime; the same offence, repeated, can count. The same section says an “enterprise” can be “any individual, sole proprietorship,” so working alone does not put someone outside the law. Gambling offences are on the statute’s list of qualifying crimes.

The money-laundering law can be broken in more than one way. Its provision on financial transactions, subsection (3)(a), works in two stages. First, prosecutors must show someone moved money knowing it was the proceeds of unlawful activity, and that it really was. Only then does the second stage matter — and there, hiding the money is one of three routes. The others are moving it to keep the crime going, or arranging it to avoid a reporting requirement. Which of those applies to Ray’s charges has not been verified.

The raid, and the $24 million

The case began in February 2025, when complaints reached the Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office about IL Villagio Senior Entertainment Center in Lady Lake, according to the office.

The Florida Gaming Control Commission, the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office and the state Division of Financial Services worked the case together, the announcement said.

On July 15 that year, investigators searched it. They carried out 190 slot machines and $348,221 in cash. A second search, at a warehouse in Marion County, turned up more machines. Ray was arrested six days later in St. Johns County. The business manager and assistant manager Barbara Buzzard were arrested on September 18. Charges were announced on September 26, and WFTV reported them that day.

Then there is the number at the centre of the case.

Prosecutors said more than $24 million “flowed through accounts connected to the illegal enterprise” between January 2023 and July 2025. That is money passing through accounts. It is not profit, not what anyone kept, and not a measure of what customers lost.

The announcement also alleges the money moved through shell companies, wire transfers and overseas accounts, and that nearly $3 million reached Ray’s personal account. Those are allegations. The machines and the cash are evidence for a court to weigh, not a verdict.

What happens now

As of that September 20 report, prosecutors had not filed a traverse — the document in which the state formally disputes a defendant’s account of the facts. The report mentions no hearing date and no ruling.

It also said Ray had been released from home confinement by Judge Mary Hatcher, subject to GPS monitoring, and that a $1 million bond had been posted earlier in the case. Those were the conditions described on September 20.

Ray and her co-defendants are presumed innocent.