Bracket Busters

The standard NCAA Tournament bracket pool -- along with the weekly football picks and the "Superbowl boxes" -- is part of the holy trinity of American sports gambling. Even casual sports fans will participate in a betting extravaganza that has been estimated at $2.5 billion in wagers -- with only a little over 3 percent of that number handled by legal gambling outlets like the sports books at Las Vegas casinos.

That leaves over $2.4 billion dollars changing hands -- mostly in tens and twenties -- at offices nationwide. Which raises an important question: is any of this legal?

The simple answer is "No, but the FBI has better things to do than chase down cubicle-dwellers for dropping a ten-spot on UCLA." But simple answers are rarely satisfying, so let's examine the question in a little more detail.

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