As long as there's a business permit for gambling, you can be let off the hook for gambling operation but there's still fortune to make even if you're on the illegal business, there's a lot of illegal gambling houses in my country but there's not a lot of them that gets caught as they are a syndicate and they tend to be operate like an open secret, you can't snitch on them as they'll going to put you on a hit for as low as 100 USD.
What country if you do not mind me asking lets to get off the hook for operating a illegal gambling website? AFAIK you cannot get a permit if it is illegal in that state because the people who give the permits will check where the business is located and where it is offering a service to. Even if the company and the servers of the website are located in another country where gambling is legal it is still illegal to offer gambling services to states that have made it illegal.