Apparently, Google are against paid links and it is against their TOS.
Websites that mention “paid links” or have an advertising page that mentions paid links will be penalised and I think Google has an automated algorithm to detect such things. You probably will not get penalised buying them as you could just buy loads for your competioros. What will happen however is the links that do pass PR and anchor and are paid, if these sites get found out they will not pass anything on and render the link useless.
A site that links to bingo and sells TVs is a huge signal that the link is paid.