Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
This WLOS story by Charu caught my interest. As we all await the trial of former Buncombe County Sheriff Bobby Medford, Charu tells us that a form of video poker, which was outlawed last year, is still happening here and around the state. As you’ll recall, North Carolina outlawed video poker machines in 2006 and phased them out last year, this is due to the up rise of online casinos, such as Casinokompassi for example which is a review / comparison site for many online casino sites that you might want to visit to find your next favorite online casino.
Charu’s story wasn’t very well reported, but she did show us the video machines at Norton’s Bar and Grill, and she mentioned a lawsuit being reported by Greensboro newspapers. She also talked to people who played the games. Good job by Charu to bring this story to our attention.
I went searching to learn more. And sure enough, I found this story by the Greensboro News & Record. Here’s the meat of the story:
GREENSBORO — The man sitting at a computer terminal inside the G&S Food Mart on Lawndale Drive declines to give his name as video tumblers spin on the computer screen in front of him.
Are the video slot machines legal? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.
No luck. The mix of sevens, cherries, bars and other symbols don’t make a meaningful combination. His account balance goes down a few dimes.
According to companies that distribute the machines and software, he’s playing a sweepstakes, a premium offered in exchange for buying a couple dollars’ worth of long-distance service. Guilford County prosecutors agree and have dropped at least one case related to these video slot machines.
But prosecutors in Rockingham County and state Alcohol Law Enforcement officers disagree, saying the machines are illegal and their owners should be prosecuted.
“They appear to fall squarely under the prohibition of a slot machine in the North Carolina statutes,” said Alan Fields, the ALE supervisor for the region including Guilford County.
Two weeks ago, ALE agents raided several businesses in Rockingham County, charging 10 people with owning illegal slot machines or allowing their operation.
Some of those Rockingham County machines were little more than desktop computers with specialized software and a reader that can scan a prepaid phone card.
Others were retrofitted video poker machines.
In Greensboro, you can find them in bars and convenience stores, as well as storefronts that have nothing but a row of computers loaded with the slot machine software.
“Each jurisdiction is looking at it,” said Tom Carruthers, an assistant district attorney in Guilford County. And different prosecutors are interpreting the state’s gaming law differently in relation to the machines.
“It is the perfect problem for the legislature to solve,” he said.
The General Assembly banned video poker in 2006 after years of lobbying by law enforcement and the advent of North Carolina’s lottery. The stand-alone terminals often found in convenience stores and bars had become notorious, and operators were frequently arrested for allowing payouts way beyond legal limits.
Those old-style machines were phased out by July 1, 2007.
Instead of bootlegging whiskey to back-room speakeasies, a new breed of video gaming operators puts their machines front and center, once again locating them in convenience stores and bars.
North Carolina law defines a slot machine as “a device where the user may become entitled to receive any money, credit, allowance, or any thing of value.”
To skirt that prohibition, the new video slot operators have developed a “sweepstakes” system.
A customer buys a prepaid phone card with a few dollars’ worth of long distance on it. As a premium for buying the card, one can enter what the companies making the software call a sweepstakes.
Winners of the sweepstakes are determined by playing what amounts to a slot machine video game, with any number of styles and faces.
Playing those games differs little than playing similar devices one would find in a casino. And although the typical sums are small, some prizes can run into the hundreds of dollars.
…
Other states have been taking a look at these systems.
Florida’s legislature is preparing to debate legislation that would outlaw these devices, although a 1998 advisory opinion by the state attorney general would seem to indicate they are illegal already. A 2004 South Carolina Supreme Court ruling also found that such prepaid phone card schemes were illegal.
And an Aug. 1, 2007, letter by the N.C. Attorney General’s office written to the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office concluded the devices were illegal, as well.
“Holding the sweepstakes out as free of charge (and appending a phone card to the scheme) is a transparent effort to dodge the strictures of the General Statutes ban on slot machines and video gaming machines,” wrote David Adinolfi, an assistant attorney general.
In that opinion, Adinolfi said the phone card machines do not fit under an exemption carved out by an earlier state appeals court case.
The machines’ owners point to that case to say their operations are legal.
In her story, Charu mentioned an “injunction,” but here’s what the Greensboro paper followed up with:
HIGH POINT — For now, state agents can’t shut down businesses featuring video slot machines connected to certain phone- and Internet-marketing systems, a judge ruled Friday.
However, the two companies that provide the software can’t expand in North Carolina while their lawsuit against the state makes its way through his court, ordered Guilford County Superior Court Judge John O. Craig III.
And businesses that state agents closed down for using Hest Technologies or International Internet Technologies software may reopen, the judge ruled. He also said that a handful that were prevented from opening could now do so, but he cautioned the companies to limit those numbers.
Craig granted a preliminary injunction after hearing five hours of evidence and arguments — and seeing live demonstrations of the systems.
The machines, which appear to allow players to play a variety of slot machine-style games, are frequently found in bars and convenience stores. Over the past year, agents with the state Alcohol Law Enforcement Division have charged operators in Guilford, Rockingham, Alamance and Davidson counties with breaking the state’s anti-gambling laws.
ALE is the law enforcement arm responsible for enforcing the state’s anti-gambling laws, along with those that concern liquor and tobacco sales and sales of lottery tickets.
The two companies asked the courts March 4 for a temporary restraining order, which prohibited ALE agents from continuing raids and arrests.
Attorneys for the two companies argued Friday that their systems are legal sweepstakes. Customers get free entries when they buy phone or Internet time. They can “reveal” what they have won by asking the cashier to tell them their prize. Or they can play computer games such as Keno or Blazing 7s.
The computer games don’t decide what a customer wins, which is different from the video slot machines the state outlawed, they argued.
“The bottom line,” attorney Rick Coughlin said, “is this is not a game of chance. This is a way to simulate a game of chance to reveal their prize.”
But Hal Askins, special deputy attorney general, and Assistant Attorney General David J. Adinolfi II argued that the machines and computers break North Carolina law. They’re being used as slot machines to dispense a prize in a game of chance, Askins and Adinolfi said.
“You can’t tie a valid sweepstakes to an illegal activity,” Askins said.
Craig struggled to see the state’s side of the argument. How, he asked, is it any different from his children going online and plugging in codes from their Pepsi or Coca-Cola caps to see if they’ve won a prize?
Craig wondered if the legality of such machines should even be decided by the courts.
“I think it ultimately becomes a legislative issue,” he said.
The hearing drew interest from district attorneys, law enforcement agents and attorneys who came from across the state, including Union, Wake and Brunswick counties.
This is definitely a case to watch. Meantime, it looks like people will still be able to play video poker machines in Buncombe County and around the state.
You know this is the states way of controlling what people do and how they spend their money. The state don't want you spending money on the machines when you could be buying lottery tickets.
If you check into the ones that lobbied to have them banned you would find it was the nc lottery,
I will never buy a lottery ticket or support the monopoly the state has on the gambling industry…
DON'T BUY NORTH CAROLINA LOTTERY TICKETS GO TO VA.
They limit gambling to the lottery and vegas. but why. when a place that has casino type games gets raided, they say the reason they get shut down is cause its illegal and people are losing there home from playing them, well how is the lottery different, how is vegas different. you can play these same exact games online now, from your own home. they have websites where you can wire money to your account and play your bank account away against people that play all around the world. what is the difference. imo, everyone that thinks these machines should go and lottery should stay need to take another look at what is fair. let it all be or take it all away. dont strattle the fence. i personnal dont care if they take them out or leave them, because i like them, but also can agree that they are bad for you. but what i hate most is the fact that people think its ok that gamble here and not there or its ok for me to open it but not you. i say let them start opening casinos everywhere or shut the whole thing down and dont allow it period.
where the — is the revenue the state receives for these scratck offs, lotteries, and on-line gaming. Seventy percent of the law is corrupt. You can pay a lawyer to receive less jail time, no court appearance, drive under the influence, turn their back. Right now, the people have to stand up and remove these people from office, because obviously the country is broke. HOW and WHY.
what give anyone the right to tell another,how to spend their money.
Really, what is going on, these games are sweepstakes and so is McDonalds and Pepsi, and you are going to tell me that people loose there paychecks to these games. What a joke, people will spend there last dollar on the lottery and beer, and sometimes drugs. This is crazy are legislators need to wake up. People are saying this is gambling and they spend there money on these games. If they ban these sweepstake games from other amusement operators to us than ban them from the hole state and the lottery because that is gambling too. People will go to Cherokee Casino or play the Lottery. I really personally think NC does not want the Lottery to be effected by this. The Educational Lottery funny!!!!! Has made 3 billion dollars tell me and really think about this people where has that money gone. Right now they are cutting budgets because NC has no money. (Education)…Alot of parents want to know if this is a educational lottery why haven’t some of the counties seen it. Things just don’t add up. Just let the amusement operators have sweepstakes and if NC needs to have a handle on this as well as everything else than start taxing them, NC will have some revenue then and Help this state out. Plus this creates jobs isn’t that what we want…….People are going to have gambling problems and drinking problems and drugs, but remember if you have a problem you will find some way of getting what you want, and can you really tell me Lottery is not gambling, come on why would that have made a hot line for this. 1-800 gambling problem line……One more question for all the sheriffs do you get phone calls on people spending there last dime on the Lottery, If so I bet you don’t say anything about that, because I know of alot of people who have a serious problem when it comes to playing the lottery, and there odds are terrible. At lease the people playing the sweepstakes have better odds, and maybe some people have hope especially right know with our economy so bad. When the legislators meet please think of all these things. Stop trying to put people out of business…just put some regulations on this, if it is such a problem, but than you need to regulate everything McDonalds, Pepsi, Harrahs, and the NC Lottery. We the people of NC need to start speaking up, and by the way I am not a gambler and never have played the lottery, but I know friends who are addicted to the Lottery and drinking and drugs. So take all the ABC stores out of NC too…..But of course NC owns them too, like the lottery. We really need to start waking up in NC people. My husband is in the amusement business and NC put us out of business when they banned the machines and we had to let 5 people go with families, but NC didn’t care because are Senators and House Representatives have great Health Insurance and good jobs. Just make a good decision not based on what is good for you but what is good for NC, taxing would be good. NC could generate money, and we really need that right know. And by the way my husband has a amusement business and we do not have any internet games out there right know but just put a few sweepstake games on some locations. Because we are so worried about putting money in these games and NC coming along and saying they are illegal. We have struggled very badly since NC has put us out of business on the amusement side, but we do have another business in retail but it is struggling very badly too.
i think that we should leave the machines becuase my father has a job building them and that the only way we make money,if people go and spend there whole paycheck them they need to be more responsible,if you dont win the first few times then STOP!!!!!!!!!!!,
Our churches can have gay pastors and we can have the lottery in North Carolina, but no poker machines? HA! People amaze me. When you have a problem gambling, you stay away from machines just like drug addicts and alcoholics, they stay away from drugs and alcohol when they have a problem. Gambling is supposed to be for entertainment purposes not for those who think they have to spend their whole paycheck. Even if that is what they wanted to do, it isn’t anyones business. I guess the next step with the government is to tell us how to spend ALL of our money, tell us how to raise our children, how to run our households. People like you who want the government to run everything deserve the communist country you will be living in soon. Get a life. Live yours and stop trying to live other peoples. grrrrr
I THINK THEY NEED TO PASS THE LAW TO TAKE ALL GAMING, INTERNET, ETC. I — — USE TO PAY TO PLAY THIS GAMES ON LINE. AND I SIT AND WATCH SO MANY PEOPLE THAT HAVE WORKED SO HARD FOR THE MONEY,. JUST GIVE IT AWAY. GAMING IS A LIKE A DRUG YOU CANT GET ENOUGH. I THINK NO MORE THEN WHAT THE INTERNET GAMING PAY OUT. THEY NEED TO SHUT THEM DOWN AND STOP TAKING ALL THE AMERICANS MONEY. GREEDY IS WHAT I SAY. I BET SOMEONE IS PAYING SOMEONE UNDER THE TABLE TO KEEP THEM. THEY TOOK OUT REGULAR POKER MACHINES IN NORTH CAROLINA, WHY ALLOW THIS TO GO ON. IS THE GOVERNMENT GETTING THEIR POCKETS IN ON THIS OR WHAT. DO THE RIGHT THING FOR ALL RESIDENTS. TAKE THEM OUT AND BANNED THEM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
are there any of the places located in the durham, burlington, raleigh area?
Are sweepstakes illegal in north Carolina. I see a lot of internet business open, and when you go in everyone is playing sweepstakes on the machines, they don’t say cash out they say redeem. Also is legal to pay the workers under the table. For me if your are running an legal business then one shouldn’t get paid under the table. Other states who have these they don’t get paid under the table. I know some places had slots and they closed them and then the business open and now use computers for gambling.
it increases more jobs for people and gives some people a chance to change there life style by winning, just as winning the lottery
To respond to this video sweepstake dilemma, I for one play these and see not one thing wrong with it nor would I consider it gambling. Furthermore if a person wants to spend their money on such entertainment, it’s the patrions purgative, then so be it. I am from an area in the northeast where 2 of the larges casino’s in the world reside. They pump millions upon millions of dollars into the economy. When is the state of North Carolina going to get it. Legalize the slot machines, tax them accordingly along with big winners of a set amount and fund state programs like other states do. You people have been chasing these machines for years to no avail, let them be and take advantage of the situation by absorbing some taxed money instead of coming up with useless and meaningless way to tax the residents of North Carolina. Perhaps providing entertainment like this instead of allowing provocative gentleman clubs to open as a form of entertainment you might get some visitors in areas that are in need of tourist attractions and will spend their money instead of men lurking around these pervert clubs. I can bet that the loudest of the people that insist on eliminating this form of entertainment (sweepstakes machines) can be found playing them as well. Please don’t give the bible thumping chatter either. Get with the program! When is this state going to come to the 21st century. If you ban them they will find another way to beat you at your game and open them in another fashion, so pass the law that legalizes these machines and go have some fun like we all do when we play.